Does history repeat itself?
I am a firm believer in "Those who do not know their history, are condemned to repeat it" If you don't study history, most likely you're gonna end up making the same mistakes our previous generation(s) did. Unfortunately, I think people tend to ignore history and make the same mistakes, always thinking THEY'RE be "right" this time. For, say, example: Hitler's idiotic plan to take invade Russia. Tsk, tsk....if he only knew what happened to Napoleon when he tried.
Which history keeps repeating over and over again?
All empires fail... All invasions of Russia fail (I'm not counting the Mongols... Russia was an embryonic state at the time)The songs of Abba come back into fashion...Economies 'boom and bust', and often the boom is based on (with hindsight) the craziest of premise (South Sea island bubble, tulips, sub-prime mortgages)...Secularism and religiosity waxes and wanes...In the end, it's hard power that counts, rely too much on soft power, be it financial clout or admired culture and that culture/civilization will fail.There will always be 'arms races', as weapons tech improves and gives comparative advantages.There are always people who believe the newest Malthusian prophecy. These people are (very nearly) always proved wrong and yet these people are given credence again when there is a new catastrophe to be seen off, reverse Casandras if you will (AGW the current disaster, GM crops, Peak Oil, over population - an old one this - Global cooling in the 70s, Radon gas, the Millennium bug, SARS, Swine Flu, Foot and Mouth, BSE, there are too many to count yet again and again we hear 'something must be done' which generally equals 'something must be banned' and 'something must be taxed'). Rampant anthropocentrism!Short-term concerns (wrongly) out-weigh long term ones.People don't learn from their mistakes. As Burke said, 'Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.'The worst of these is definitely Abba... I had to listen to them growing up in the 70s and they've been back at least three times since then. Argh! Thanks for the A2A
How and why does history repeat itself?
Easy. We are humans and unless we have experience with the mistake, or elders who have made the same mistakes, we have no reason to understand what may happen. Your 4+great grand can’t tell you not to chop your foot off with a sword. You have no actual context for it. When you DO chop your foot off with the sword form you 4+great grand it’s a new experience in your view.Sucky answer I know. Just… we repeat the same mistakes because for us it’s new even though others did the same thing!
Does history really repeat itself?
No, history does not repeat itself literally. That is a simplistic interpretation of a series of quotes (by Marx, Darrow, Shaw all based upon Thucidydes original quote of "History repeats itself."). As others have pointed out, no two events are exactly the same. The problem with claiming Iraq is another Vietnam is you destroy your credibility because of all the ways they're different. Ditto with any other two events. Besides Thucidydes did not literally mean that the world is predestined and unchangeable and keeps returning to stuff that happened before. Instead, Thucidydes had a more sophisticated interpretation when he said this. That simple statement meant... 1. If you ignore history you will become victim to it. There is value in studying the past. You don't just learn history, you become more astute about understanding people's motives and anticipating the future. Not because history "repeats" itself but by studying the past we learn about how people act and why so we can better read current events and thus prepare for the future. 2. There are archetypes. Thucidydes didn't know to call them this. But there are ways that societies and organizations and masses behave as a system that allows us to see and anticipate behavior. When it rains in the foothills of India, a day later the banks of the Ganges overflow. That's not the ill-will of the gods, just a case of seeing how one action begats another. The classic archetype is Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" (which he tells using sheepherders and common grazing round but applies equally as well to the office coffee maker or shared space at your condo). 3. Dumb people make the same mistakes over and over--they don't learn. So it appears that "history" ends up "repeating" itself (when actually it's a statement about wise people learning from their errors and adjusting their actions accordingly).
What does the saying: History Repeats Itself mean?
Things that have happened in the past will happen again. I perceive the cause of this to be humans nature. Most human will react in similar ways for similar situations. Over a long enough span of time similar events will occur and there is a high probability that a similar outcome will occur. People tend not to learn from the past and act on emotions so that is another reason things happen over and over again.
What does "History will repeat itself" mean?
It means that because people in general are predictable, there is a strong likelyhood that someone, somewhere will do, say or even think along the same lines as previously did, said or thought thus creating a similar if not the same outcome to a scenario - "history repeating itself" scenarios have a limited number of variations and the outcomes are based on decisions made by predicable people, there will be a small percentage of people(relatively speaking on a global scale) that will err on either extreme therefore the predictability of people causes the effect of history repeating itself.
Why is it said that history is doomed to repeat itself?
Because it does, and we as a world- society let it. There is always someone in the current time who thinks he can act like someone before and yet have different results. There is always another dictator waiting to take power in some country, often sacrificing, torturing, raping, murdering and exploiting his own people in the name of the "greater" good. Bin Laden, Edie Amin, Momar Qudaffi, Adolph Hitler and on and on since Grok beat Throg in prehistoric days... Always someone trying to dominate, almost always with disastrous results. Does history repeat? Absolutely. We often ignore the pending warning signs and let it. During the Genocide of WW II, the cry was "Never Again! Ie, never again would we as a society allow such atrocities. Yet, ten minutes later (figuratively) Korea was at war against it's own people. Soviets had gulags. China had all kind of human rights violations. Viet Nam, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Isis, and on and on. And never forget America's "Manifest Destiny" in which we declared the country ours (specifically the white male's) and insisted that God wanted us to rule from sea to sea. Never mind the Native Americans- kill them, enslave them, drive them off their land etc. God wanted us to expand and rule (uhh.... Bullshit). Oh, and then there was that nasty black slavery issue...I think that nastiness, aggression and even abuse are simply hardwired into the human psyche. Probably it was some survival skill in prehistoric times. The trait just hasn't had the decency to go extinct as society evolves. It ebbs and flows, but it never goes away. Not to say there's no good to be found. There is a lot, but peace and beauty just dont seem to last, nor do they get the recognition that evil does. For example, watch any news feed. Death, violence, crime etc comprise like 75% of the show. Should it? No, but yet it does.Sorry to say, but History always repeats itself, and there doesn't seem to be a damn thing we can do to stop it. Let's just hope we never stop trying. Perhaps little by very little things will change. That's my hope.
Does history repeat its self, or do people repeat history?
well the question itself is redundant. people repeat history with their seemingly collective, innate inability to learn from past mistakes, and as people fall into documented examples of poor judgement, history is made and the repetition of history is evident. I heard this on a radio station. If i had to pick one, i would say that people repeat history.
If history repeats itself, then how can we avoid the mistakes from the past?
Thanks for asking.I confess I do not like the question.“If history repeats itself” - that creates a given and we cannot prove it. What should repeat itself? The Holocaust? Witch Trials? School shootings?The mistakes will be the same with or without that given rule of repetition.The far more frightening question is, however: If history does not repeat itself: What can we then do?What can we do against the ongoing environmental destruction of our planet? What can we do against the waste of irreplaceable resources?I grow mad when I think of the fact that every plastic bag, every mile driven by a car on an fun ride and not more - is actually fueling the remnants of fossils of ancient oceans - for just no further use.Your question has its moralistic undertone - and I do not want to do morals. I want to consider the mistakes we are aware of. I am the guy on the passenger’s seat who is staring at the wall we are heading towards, and I hear the driver involving me in a talk that has nothing to do with that wall or his readiness to add some extra speed.