Lessons We Learn From History

Winston Churchill once said, “ Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” We just have to turn on the news to see that society seems to be trapped in a cycle of repetition. Sir. Churchill’s words ring true to every person who reads them, but why don’t we learn? Why do we keep inflicting the same pain on each other? Do not get me wrong; we are far better as a society than we were a century ago. Far less people die from infectious disease or starvation and there has not been a world war in over seventy years. We need to pray that the current conflict in Ukraine does not change all that. 

History gives clues of a possible future, one that we should avoid, but we cannot prevent history repeating itself if we do not focus on the events of history. I propose that one of the reasons why we repeat history is because we focus too much on the suffering experienced. We obsess over the perpetrators and victims, instead of understanding the environments surrounding the events. 

We need to study the conditions that led the people to do what they did. We need to study Nazi German history, not to paint Germans with one brush, but to point out the driving forces of why they believed Hitler. We need to see ourselves in them and think of how we might have been influenced by Hitler and his propaganda machine. 

We need to pay attention to the mechanics of events or conditions surrounding those events and not get caught up in the emotional impact. 

War, genocides, or any other atrocity resulting from geopolitical conflicts comes with very high costs and we should not forget them. But dwelling on the cost and who paid it causes us to repeat the events. The memories of suffering caused by the pain are passed down to the next generation creating resentment. The perpetrators' children suffer from guilt and bend themselves to the point of breaking trying to repay a debt that can never be repaid. The cost of one human life cannot be recouped. We have to learn from the events of history in order to prevent the loss of life. We cannot turn back the hands of time or keep score. 

History helps us know what we can do to create progress while preventing tragic outcomes. We can unite together to spread the right values and innovate towards a more peaceful future. We cannot achieve this by dividing ourselves by gender, class, ethnic groups, tribes, perpetrators, victims, etc. We can achieve greatness by uniting together to fight the real enemy: the worst parts of ourselves. We need to fight propaganda, preserve free speech, and protect the vulnerable. It is imperative that we prevent the reruns of bad episodes by letting go of bad ideas, ideas that divide us or vilify those who are different from us. Loving each other will give us a brighter tomorrow. We have to see history as events and not as characters who either caused pain or experienced it. The answer is seeing the past as a warning for what we are all capable of and considering the present as a clean slate where we can write a better future that will become a past that we can all be proud of.