The proposition that history repeats itself is a fiction.

[Just Me]

There is no evidence, whatsoever, that history,...our history as recorded has ever exactly replicated itself.

I don't know why that fiction continues to be perpetuated unless it has something to do with a refusal to believe that we have and do evolve.

We individual human beings may very well get STUCK, repeating our own past over and over, again. In spite of us, the rest of the world and universe still expands and moves forward.

So, I beg that the fiction of "history repeating itself" be treated for what it is: a fiction. Meanwhile, I urge that we continue to learn and grow from our history rejecting the notion that we are condemned to repeating it.

[Kraklen]

1. Geez, thanks, Stephen Hawking.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=figure%20of%20speech

[Journeyman]

2. "Eadem sed aliter." History's motto. . .

"The same things differently" ~ Schopenhauer

[htuttle]

7. "History doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes"

-- Mark Twain (paraphrased)

[Journeyman]

10. When I was in college, one of my history professors boldly asserted. . .

there were no lessons to be learned from history, that even if we could learn from history it wouldn’t keep us from committing the same mistakes over and again. He was so sure of himself, he offered an ‘A’ in the class to anyone who could present him evidence of a lesson learned from history.

He was taken aback at how fast my hand shot up. “Yes, Mr. Journeyman,” he almost sneered, “what ‘lesson’ do you find from history?”

“We don’t take elephants over the Alps anymore,” I replied, as I gathered my books like Hannibal gathered his troops and made for the door.

[htuttle]

11. Nor are we likely to allow big wooden horses through the city gates again

But you could probably find metaphorical equivalents to both of those things in modern times.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Just Me]

9. It's replete with examples of assholes who pull us back.

We're still moving forward in spite of them. We're actually learning FASTER than ever before.

[Crankie Avalon]

4. Isn't the whole phrase, "Those who do not learn from history...

...are doomed to repeat it"?

Like how we got ourselves into Iraq in spite of our experience in Vietnam?

But then again, certain people told us that Iraq would actually be just like our liberation and reconstruction of Europe from WWII and that bit of history certainly didn't repeat, did it?

[Just Me]

14. We learned from history.

Sure, the corporacultist cabal betrayed and manipulated the good will and trust of the American people. But, the Iraq era is definitely moving far faster than the Vietnam era.

We don't repeat history. We do learn. We can't help ourselves.

[Crankie Avalon]

15. I think the loved ones of all the American soldiers and Iraqi civilians...

...who have died so far would say that, whatever it was we supposedly learned, we didn't learn it well or fast enough.

I agree that we can't seem to help ourselves, though.

[Just Me]

18. Their sacrifice has increased our passion.

Their lives have pushed greater meaning for our cause to confront exploitation.

Our "learning" has given greater meaning to all those soldiers who sacrificed their lives.

[Beaver Tail]

5. The saying goes

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

It is not meant to be play by play action but metaphorical. The Goulags and Gitmo. Nazis and the Bush Administration

The saying is Representative, not literal. History in this sense "DOES" repeat itself.

[driver8]

6. It is not fiction...man continues to make the same mistakes time

and time again.

Look at the US -- we learned nothing from Vietnam and we learned nothing from the fascism of Germany. Shrub and company's government fits many characteristics of fascism...and look at what the guards are doing at Abu Ghraib. Jack boots anyone?? We do not learn...

Iraq is becoming another Vietnam, and our government is becoming an example of fascism. It may not be exactly as before, but close enough.

The point is, we never fucking learn.

[Just Me]

8. Then, how did we take the wheel and move into the internet?

If we are stuck, women and blacks and hispanics would NOT hold any rights.

C'mon. Don't dismiss or minimizes our successes AGAINST history.

[UTUSN]

16. The Wheel, Internet, and Such Are Techonological, not Human Behaviors

It might even be debatable that such things are "progress" over plain old existence in any form of existence.

And regarding human behavior, when Shrub or other black'n'whiters say that "terrorism will be defeated" or ERRADICATED --uh, not in anybody's lifetime, no more than murder, burglary, child abuse, or other human behaviors will ever be wiped out completely, short of massive numbers of lobotomies being performed.

Plus, there are known historical eras when technological advances were "forgotten". Probably are some NOT known historical eras where things were forgotten, and things had to be rediscovered or reinvented or perhaps haven't even been rediscovered.

And as for "progress", there are some conditions of things that are as good as it is possible to be, but the tinkering didn't stop and the thing got worse, not better.

Uh, I think I'd better stop now.

[Just Me]

21. Humanity created that technology,...not vice versa.

Yep. Humanity has and will engage in some seriously reckless and awful and irrational and stupid behavior and violent behavior. Humanity has and will always push for something greater and better than that which preceeded us. We'll screw up along the way. No doubt. We'll progress in spite of ourselves.

[UTUSN]

22. I've Said All I Can Say in #16 n/t

[driver8]

31. I'm not staying we are stuck...I never mentioned that, in fact.

What does one have to do with the other? Technology evolving and man committing the same mistakes are like comparing freepers to DUers...what has one got to do with the other??

What I am saying is, man is repeating the same actions that previously ended in disaster. Vietnam and Iraq, the fascist Nazis and the fascist Neocons.

What is that saying when you repeat the same actions over and over but expect different results? That is true today. The neocons (although very few actually went to Vietnam) learned nothing from that war -- absolutely fucking nothing. We are there for a long, long time...thousands and thousands of lives lost, billions of dollars pissed away and for what? Because a bunch of rich guys wanted to control Iraq.

I am not dismissing any successes against history at all. I am just saying that "man rarely learns from past mistakes."

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. Dialectical materialism 101.

The haves try to keep the goodies from the have nots.

Been repeating itself, in one form or another, since Cain whacked Abel.

[DireStrike]

35. Who was the have? Cain or Abel?

[Just Me]

37. As if they were the only two involved,...BAH!!!

How many times over and over again have brothers and sisters exceeded this fiction?

We have learned to live beyond "Cain or Abel". Stories and fiction can't stop us.

We're growing beyond those who dictate our beliefs by growing our own, together, outside the ambitious and greedy and powerful.

[The River]

13. I Just Flipped a Coin Twice

It came up heads BOTH times. History repeated itself exactly.

[Historic NY]

17. Ah but history does repeat, maybe not exactly but it does mainly....

because of man's intervention or lack thereof. The premise is not so much based on repeating it over and over but from the lack of learning from past mistakes. Man can shape his history, his life, his world. He has the capacity to learn & grow if he chooses, that is where the fork in the road is. While going forward man should look over his shoulder once in a while to see how he got to where he is.

[alcibiades_mystery]

20. "Men make their own history, but they do not do so just as they please...

...they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past”. The traditions of the dead generations weigh like a nightmare on the minds of the living." - Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

[alcibiades_mystery]

19. I agree: Marx was much better than Santayana on this

Santayana said: "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." There is no repeat of history, at least as repetition is usually understood. Marx had it much better: "Hegel says that all great world historical events and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce."

There is something like a repetition, in other words, but it is always a repetition with a difference: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce...Marx understands the SINGULARITY of the historical occasion. Far too many DUers rely on the stupidity of historical analogy: X is just like Y, etc. This leads us astray in general. X is not like Y. X is like X, and the more wqe concentrate on its SIMILARITY to Y, the less we get the SINGULARITY of X. Bad form of analysis.

[Just Me]

24. I've studied neither. I look at human history and know that,...

,...the proposition history replicates itself is a lie. Do certain human behaviors repeat,...sure,...but, it doesn't stop us from expanding. We're better than we believe, apparently.

[driver8]

32. What do you mean by expanding??

Thousands of American soldiers died in Vietnam for no good reason and thousands of American soldiers will die in Iraq for no good reason. If this is expanding, you can have it!!

[Just Me]

36. How dare you treat our soldiers' lives in such a way!!!!

:grr:

You condemn the meaning of their lives to a corporacultist regime? :grr:

You FAIL to acknowledge how their lives drove the greatest civil demand for justice and equality in this country's history!!!!

Don't EVER demean the lives of MY SOLDIERS in such shallow terms!!!! :grr:

[driver8]

39. WTF are you talking about?? I am a veteran and have nothing

but respect for our service men and women...

Are we even having the same conversation??

You are wound a little tight...

Your soldiers?? Why the fuck are they your soldiers??

[ismnotwasm]

23. Well I just lost my chance to be worshiped

As a fertility goddess then. Damn I'd start my own temple and everything.;)

[Just Me]

25. Not sure what that has to do with the OP.

I'm open to your "reasoned" explanation of how your post ties into the position that, the assertion history repeats itself is a fiction". }(

[ismnotwasm]

29. No way

I just think the topic is kind of funny. I'd dig a deep hole if I argued that one........:blush:

[Just Me]

33. *LOL*

:hug: I've been a witness to change by many, many folks. So, the suggestion that we stand still, that we are stuck in some inevitable mud,...is simply repulsive to me. My studies and my life have proved such tales a fiction. History has proven itself a process,...not a repetition. Anyone who seriously studies our history would look at it and say, "we've evolved a LOT".

I'm not dismissing the destructive human disease that persists. I'm just sayin', we progress in spite of the worst lot of our humanity.

[leeroysphitz]

26. It is the DOOM of Men thatt they forget. n/t

[Just Me]

34. Those who never forget and LEARN from the past,...pull us forward.

"Learning" requires the desire to acquire knowledge and to spend energy in understanding people.

I find the neoCONs' position of "creating history" ridiculous. I must, again, admonish the "Landmark Forum" because their so-called "education" replicates this administration's excuses to deny reality.

[Rex]

27. The odds of our history exactly replicating itself are remote at best.

The chance that humans will make the same mistakes as in the past is very likely.

[PurityOfEssence]

28. Well, congratulations for the most idiotic thread of the year

Above the molecular level, very few two things compare exactly.

What's your purpose here? Is it to show that there's nothing to be learned from the past, thus ignorance is just fine? Is to puff and act like a conservative, pronouncing infinite wisdom in the face of your own ignorance? That's what conservatives and fundamentalists do: they declare themselves masters of all knowledge so they can avoid that horrible torture of having to think

This is a destructive and laughably incorrect premise, and it smacks of your own defensiveness against pesky information.

The actions of individuals and societies follow shocking patterns. If people read much more history, they could avoid many of the sad pitfalls that repeat all the time.

To hide behind an argument that since there's no absolute comparison the whole idea is pointless is nothing but infantile puffery.

The xenophobic war craze against the Germans in World War I was as similar to that against the Japanese in World War II as it is to that against swarthy Middle-Eastern Muslims today. The laws enacted and the acts of private citizens are much the same. That's repetition.

Not only are you wrong, you're on some kind of bent to prove yourself more attuned than others. This is tiresome.

The way the Confederacy lost the Civil War is much the same way the Axis lost the Second World War: belief in personal superiority, inability to cooperate within their coalitions, and a false worshiping of the cult of personality. Both wars were won by pluralist communal groups who pooled resources and believed in the strength of groups rather than the primacy of the godkinghero.

Yeah, it's fun to be a contrarian, but most of that thrill is an adolescent desire to prove everyone to be a bunch of dolts. This is the kind of silly self-aggrandizing claptrap I'd expect from someone like Holden Caulfield. To use an ad absurdum argument depending on absolute and specific repetition shows either that you simply don't understand the very concept at hand or have some kind of disdain for those who study history.

[Just Me]

30. Obviously, your perception is set in stone.

You've judged me (mostly) and dismissed my position by imposing your perception/persecution as though YOU ARE THE prosecutor/judge/jury,...as though YOU BELIEVE YOURSELF THE JUDGE OF TRUTH.

I can only offer the wise words of Einstein:

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwerecked by the laughter of the gods."

Meanwhile, I ask that you refuse to buy into the fiction that history repeats itself,...'cause it's a lie. Some people will project their past and cast it into their future because they are never given the gift of the power to face and feel and grow from the past.

Others have and will proceed no matter what the challenges. We will proceed, forward.

[driver8]

38. I'm not judging anyone...I'm just trying to understand.

You are the one telling me that "history repeating" is a lie. You have not given me a reason why it is a lie, you have simply told me that we will continue to proceed.

Can we not proceed and repeat mistakes??? I don't understand why this cannot be so.

My persecution??? Knock the chip off your shoulder and maybe we can discuss this further...

[Just Me]

40. Ummm,...I was responding to the poster,...you were not the poster.

So, your post makes no sense to me.

But, since you've got my attention, why don't you prove that the past MUST be cast into the future. Also, I challenge you to prove that history has replicated itself and explain why your perception of history (as a never-ending repetition) conflicts with a comparative factual analysis of the status of human existence 5000 years ago compared to human existence today.

[PurityOfEssence]

41. the cockiness of your approach is tiresome

First, you're using a straw man argument: that anyone who sees patterns of human behavior repeating is locked into some assumption that nothing ever changes. Santayana didn't say that, and many of us who see MANY patterns of human behavior don't say that.

The crux of the problem is that you reject knowledge from the past without ever having even learned it. It would help you to listen more and talk less.

The recurring argument of the young and annoying is that "everything's different now." This is a twofold folly: it dismisses the past as something that shouldn't even be looked into and it sets up some arrogant belief that the human race has somehow changed. Communism failed the same way the current conservatives will fail: they're both based on the perfectibility of mankind. Man is as good and as bad as he's ever been, and there's been no real demonstrable change through recorded history. Marxists think that taking away the brutality of Capitalism will make people feel more a part of society and willingly work. That's crap; many will simply not get out of bed if they know they're safe. The current conservatives think that if they take away all safety nets, people will be more responsible. Nope, many people will still be shortsighted, and shit happens.

We can and should learn from the past. Read some Plautus or Aristophanes, and you'll see that personality types haven't changed for the past two and a half millenia.

Dismissing things you admit that you don't even know shoots down your whole argument: you set yourself up as some godlike creature. Who the fuck are you? Are you some deity that innately knows all without any pesky wasted time of learning. Attack and ridicule others who are humble in the face of human history and you prove yourself to be nothing more than another loudmouth. Your arguments are less than puerile: man has advanced, yet still follows the same patterns. Those discriminated against in the past have been more accepted now, but there always seems to be another group that gets it's ass kicked. That's the lesson.

Your whole approach is deeply hypocritical: you make fatuous pronouncements and then accuse anyone who counters your edicts as being difficult. Since you demand the right to be so combative and childish, try this: you started it. Snorting derision at anyone who doesn't hue to your barking genius is pathetic and deeply ignorant. The busses are filled with marginal and ignorant dropouts who will tell you at length how everyone else is an idiot. Asylums are filled with people who KNOW everyone else is a fool and only they understand how the world works.

Smart and sane people know how limited they are, and they keep their eyes and ears open.

You accuse me of having made my mind up and being stodgy, whereas your whole premise is a close-minded dismissal of human events.

When you insult people endlessly, you have no right to shriek and bellyache that you haven't been treated with proper respect. This whole thread is self-aggrandizing caterwauling, and it's nothing but the foolishness of the combative adolescent.

Develop some humility and do some reading. Einstein quotes don't trump anything if others are dismissed out of hand.

Wellington explained the victory at Waterloo two ways. The famous version is that it was won on the playing fields of Eton, which suggests that the English people have a superior educational system and society. The better explanation was this: "they came on in the same old way, and we stopped them in the same old way."