Every Thursday or so I am going to give you all some food for thoughts. Let's start with these excellent quotes (two were borrowed from another blog -thanks The Red Witch!):
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives" Abba Eban
Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times. People have always been like this" Gustave Flaubert
"History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies." Alexis the Toqueville
"History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there." George Santayana
Are we condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past? Do people really need exhausting all other alternatives to finally take wise, responsible decisions? Is the adage about "good ole times" mostly true or mostly false? Is it possible to know everything about different historical events? I would love to know your opinion!
eta: I know it's actually Friday but still I wanted to start the meme and yesterday I was rather busy. I promise next instalments will appear on Thursday.
Some times I think we are doomed to repeat the past. It seems like people in general have really bad memories.
ReplyDeleteNo I don't think the "old" days were better. I think its just nostalgia talking. There are many things that people dealt with 20-50 years ago that I'm glad I don't have to deal with now i.e. Jim Crow laws, lack of modern medicine. But that's just me.
People make the same mistakes mainly because their lives are too short. Just imagine what perspective you could have if you lived not 100 but 1000 years. That's why we must read historical accounts but,in order to learn something from history you must take an active interest in it and not all want to do it. Those mythical "old good times" never existed - I agree with you, Brooke - life have been difficult in every age, significantly more difficult than currently.
ReplyDeleteI have been reading a book on the 14th century, the stupidity and failure to learn caused so much needless suffering. Pride and Greed seem to be the worst forces. They are still with us today and there still are people who think they are immune from justice. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
ReplyDelete"Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."
ReplyDeleteOh definitely. Miss Marple got it right: human nature remains the same, no matter whether we use a stone tool or a computer. Apart from that it's easier not to remember.
Think how much our memory plays tricks on us even for remembering fairly recent events. Our senses aren't designed for admitting as much information as possible, but for screening most of it out, or our brains would be permanently overloaded. Our brains are extremely selective.
ReplyDeleteBut now that we have sound recording, film, cameras and mobile phone images which can be instantly uploaded, and computers which can make anything key people said about an event instantly available, you would hope that in future, we do learn from past mistakes because the evidence is so much more visible. We don't need to remember everything, we have technology which can do it for us, as long as we have electricity.
I remember one experiment I witnessed during my psychology classes at the uni. It was supposed to show us how difficult it is to get an unbiased and true version of events even from eyewitnesses.
ReplyDeleteA quarrel between the lecturer and one of the students was staged and registered by another student, using a camcorder, who hid himself at the back of the classroom. Then the lecturer chose three eyewitnesses from the auditorium and they were interviewed by a "police officer" - an assistant lecturer who wasn't present during the quarrel and asked them the same questions. The three interviews were also registered, so nobody had any shred of suspicion who said what about the event.
As it was easy to predcit, three different people gave three different accounts of the same event. They were so sure that they remembered it right; even after showing them the original recording of the quarrel some of them insisted they saw/witnessed something different.
After such an experiment you see the whole history in a new light.