What are concrete examples where someone unlearned in history repeated a mistake of the past? The first example that springs to mind is Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa: but Hitler was presumably quite cognizant of Napoleon’s failure to conquer Moscow yet invaded anyway. In fact, he was so frantic to avoid Napoleon’s specific tactical mistakes (“don’t invade Russia in the winter”) that he made other, bigger mistakes (“make sure your army is prepared with winter gear, just in case” evidently escaped him).
I’m sure that the aphorism in the title could be found true in billions of tiny ways (“I told you that plate was hot”), but I’m speaking of the broader strokes of actual history.
For reference:
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.”
George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905
Yes, speculative economic bubbles happen over and over - but generally not because the people involved don’t “remember” past bubbles. Investors just assume that the current run-up isn’t a bubble (or that they can get out in time - there’s always another sucker).
The quote in question is true as far as it goes. If you truly had never heard of a speculative bubble (or that multiple military leaders have failed conquering Russia in winter) you would be likely to make the same mistake. However, mere knowledge of history is clearly not enough - you also have to be able to accurately analogize the current situation with some historical precedent. This is exceedingly difficult…
Speaking of Iraq, would could also compare and contrast the current occupation with the British colonial experience there.
Vietnam strategy was generally based on the assumption that Ho Chi Minh = Hitler. It was also influenced by the Soviet takeover of eastern Europe after WWII (which was the basis of the Domino Theory).
Actually both the English attempts to pacify Wales and Rome’s to pacify England were major success stories. Wales, apart from fringe groups, has been quiescent sice Owen Glendower in the 14th century, and Rome broke the back of British resistance with the defeat of Boudicca and the colony was quiet, save for Roman generals using it as a base for imperial ambitions, until Rome withdrew in the fifth century.
The other big problem is that all situations (of war, economy, peacetime, etc.) are slightly different, and attempting to apply the same types of historical lesson to them all is an invitation to disaster. What worked once is not guaranteed to work again.
Look at your own personal life. I guarantee every mistake you’ve ever made as an adult is the result of not learning from, remembering, or understanding your personal experiences, which are your personal history.
The world is just the result of many individuals and their lack of learning. Or occasionally the reverse.
1.) I used to have a book that pointed out many similarities between Napoleon’s problems trying to invade Russia and Hitler’s. Apparently there were some very surprising similarities, the the order of the similarities between the Lincoln and JFK assasination. Very likely many of them were just as significant (that is, not very).
2.) arguably another similarity is that both Napoleon and Hitler wrere unable to invade England, and this caused both of them immense problems. You can’t exactly say that Hitler didn’t learn from previous experience – he certainly tried to bring England down without invading, using first bombers and then the V-1 and V-2 missiles. But he might’ve done better to ignore Russia and make a more traditional try for England.
3.) Read Machiavelli’s The Prince. Machiavelli cites multiple examples of people at different times facing the same problem, some of them succeeding and some failing. I am awed and humbled by Machiavelli’s knowledge of history, because I’ve never heard of most of the people he cites, from ancient history and the history of his time. If there’s one guy who DID learn from history, it was Machiavelli. And he highlights the main reason, I think, that people DON’T learn from history – most people don’t know enough histoy in the first place to see the parallels when they do arise.
4.) which brings up yet another point. Machiavelli had a huge posthumous influence, but, like Confucius, not an awful lot during his life. Which ilustrates the converse state,ment, also true: “Those who cannot Repeat History are Condemned only to Remember it.”
I’m just saying that anything you look at can and will be an example of this. Anything. The current financial situation. Prop 8 in California. World War II. The failure of center cities. The revival of center cities. The airline industry. Rap music.
The aphorism is always applicable as long as humans are in the equation. That’s an inevitable consequence of humans acting like humans as individuals.
Yes, it does somewhat weaken the appeal by making it so broad and universal. My take on it, however, is that nothing can be properly understood without an appreciation of the history and the context of the event, and that’s a truism that many people do forget and ignore. Over and over and over.
This is my particular complaint, here: you can say of nearly any war that “you didn’t learn the lesson of history.” It’s rarely illustrated so boldly as Barbarossa.