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What is the lesson that you learn from history? Is it true that we never learn any lesson from history?

  • Human nature seems to be such that it wants a first hand experience to a situation although the history will be replete with such situations in the past and get their fingers burnt. War is evil and brings in untold miseries to mankind. Yet, we are the only living species in perpetual war with our fellow members of the species.

  • Answer:

    Ok I'm a historian so might have a go at answering this one. The point is that its very difficult to learn from history because its very difficult to apply the lessons in the right way- as situations don't repeat themselves. What history does teach though is a method of understanding people and consequently evaluating political actions in a better way- by understanding how someone thinks with a totally different value system to you you can begin to think about how politics which ultimately is a clash of value systems works and how to reconcile people. C.S. Lewis in his allegory a pilgrims regress, imagined that history was a wise old pilgrim who had visited every ideological landscape and so understood them all- I think that is quite a good description of the historian's job. Oh and as for war, that's not right actually plenty of animals have wars, there is lots of research which show that chimps have embryonic statelets in the jungle and war against each other for territory. http://gracchii.blogspot.com

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If we do not learn from history we are doomed to repeat it. (those that do not are)

mel

Generally we don't learn.

Meeto

We learn many things from history. We could not possibly continue life without the memory we have in our very own brains. Those memories are called history. If we did not remember and had no examples we would be living everyday like the Ground Hog day with Bill Murray, very redundant and no one would know they are repeating the same thing they did yesterday. It is just that so many times we ignore the lessons out of denial, whether it is because we dont want to believe that there was a holocaust. And why because we may have a relative or two that could have done those atrocities. Or denial because we will not believe we could be capable of doing such a thing, so it doesnt have an effect on us. Denial is mainly the reason people dont believe or make the difference for a future without repeating the same mistakes. However some of learn from our mistakes and history because we care enough about ourselves and others to make a better world. So we will write things down in diaries like Anne Frank so that even facing death she had faith that someone would benefit and learn to enable others to live freely and not make those horrible mistakes. Some people believe that by repeating history they will get it right in their own way like the neo-nazis, and yet they are just banging their heads on a brick wall. For history provides us with a path to a positive road to join others in harmony for success in freedom. History provides us with freedom of choice because it reflects the negative and the positive to allow us to correct the errors in the future.

magime

Very very true. There are still terrible racists out there and here on-line. As long as there is land, there will always be war. And if we were all the same color, we'd still find a reason to hate. We have our nerve hating our next door neighbor, and then ask "god" to be on our side. What a joke!!

Jack

history always repeats itself...it may have different names, places, etc... but it always repeats. Those that are aware can learn how to change it.

hummingbird

The liberals have rewritten the history books, so it's now more difficult to learn from it.

Marty K

There was this quote, "If history repeats itself, then man does not learn from history." Some do, that was why some institutions like the League of Nations, later changed to United Nations were formed to prevent catastrophes like WW1 & WW2 to ever happen again. Some won't, as current examples like Bush, who was bent upon removing Saddam that he disregarded warnings that he could "win the war, but will not win the peace." Look at the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. Some wish for history to repeat. Osama wants a return to the glorious days of the Islamic Caliphate, and is willing to do anything to bring about the revival of the Wahabism............

dreamofyz

very few people actually read history to learn anything - they would rather mug up and pass examinations ...

Kolkata-India

history never repeats.

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