why we never learn

Most of us know George Santayana's famous phrase "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.". But most of us don't really bother to think about it. They say history is just glotifying the past, th heroes, those who sacrificed their lives. But history is more than just remembering the things past. For me, history provides us with information on what happened to society at that particular place at that particular time. It provides us with variables that we can use to analyze the present and see what may happen in the future. Yes, there is no constant formula. Each event is different. The circumstances may be different now and what happened 3 decades ago, so why use the past as an example? one may argue that.

History is not to be merely read. It must be analyzed. One cannot just read through history and say "oh, thats what happened. well, things are different now. why bother?!" It is not about what happened or where and when it happened. History, as fact-filled as it is, is about WHY it happened and HOW it was dealt with. Its about realizing how we reached from point A to point B, and based on that analogy, what could point C be like? Its about filling the spaces between the events, finding the causes, the effects.

Most people hate history. They claim irrelevance. But what happened to our country 20 years ago affected our lives just as much as what happened to one individual when he/she was first beat up by his/her father. We ourselves look back at our own past and try to learn from it. At least, some of use do. I agree with Sigmund Freud with his words: "Only a good-for-nothing is not interested in his past." without one's past, we will not understand why we are like this now. Even worse, we wont have a single clue as to who we will be in the future.

Its just the same as studying our own history. If we don't try to learn from it, we won't progress into what we all want to be. For some people, history is boring. in all history classes worldwide, im willing to bet that 1/3 of the students sleep through their history classes. the other 1/3 are gazing out the windows and thinking about lunch, or their girlfriends, or what mall to go to after class. Only one-thirds of that class will listen and understand this. maybe some of them are young enough to realize that their understandnig of history will be important to their futures. Some of them are old enough to know this, and will try to change the way things are. Some may use that for other reasons that will benefit them (sorry, i just cant resist saying something about TraPos ). And some will remain hopeful that maybe history will unfold into something better. One could only hope that those who are ignorant to this would realize that the collective ignorance of society to history will continue to be detrimental to the development of the state. the scary thing about history, is that history tells us that things that we do cannot be undone. whatever we decide to do is final. Final.


"What experience and history teach is this-that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it." G. W. F. Hegel