Santayana: Does history repeat? Can people learn?

cf. Wikipedia...

A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States, wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters, although, of his nearly 89 years, he spent only 39 in the U.S. He is perhaps best known as an aphorist, and for the oft-misquoted remark, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Two quick - and simplistic - thoughts to get the ball rolling:

History doesn't "repeat", although human nature being what it is, the same motivations keep showing up (largely self interest), with the same finite set of responses to these motivations (largely self interest).

One of my old classics professors, Gwen Morgan, used to say (tongue in cheek) that "history repeats" is a canard used by historians so they wouldn't have to go get a real job. Current publications which draw absurd comparisons between the United States and ancient Rome would seem to support Professor Morgan's theory.

Individuals may gain insights into history, but I tend to believe history is a mass phenomenon, and the crowd, while they may under the right circumstances be easily led, has little control over history's rudder.

Message 2: makifat

You make good points and certainly something to think about.

The question of repetition and patterns in history is something difficult to cover so I will set up a series of threads where people can review the 'repetition' question more specifically.

Thanks for your views.

Ur.

>Message 2: makifat

' I tend to believe history is a mass phenomenon and the crowd, while they may under the right circumstances be easily led, has little control over history's rudder.'

I am not sure if I understand the term 'history's rudder.' Could you explain the term in more detail?

Thanks.

I saw this article yesterday in my local Asian newsweekly. It seemed to be an example of this topic although perhaps it should be in a "historiography in the news" thread. Anyway, it seemed to have some relevance for this group.

Story online here or you can view The Asian Reporter in .pdf (page 5 of 8).

Khmer Rouge story a vague one for young Cambodians

By Susan Postlewaite
The Associated Press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Dum Sum An, street vendor of fried rice and noodles, is too young to have known Cambodia’s 1970s reign of terror. For her, the trial of Khmer Rouge high-ups in the courthouse nearby means crowds of spectators who need to be fed.

The 24-year-old woman, like many of her generation, has only a cursory knowledge of the horrors wrought on the country during the group’s four-year hold on power. She says she came to Phnom Penh for a job and earns $60 to $100 a month from her tin-roofed stall 100 yards from the custom-built courthouse.

"I don’t have time to follow the trial," she said.

The U.N.-assisted Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia, which last week began hearing the first genocide case against a former Khmer Rouge official, hopes to find justice for the 1.7 million people who were worked to death, starved or executed by the communist regime, and to set the record straight for survivors and history.

The subject isn’t taught in schools, and many survivors find it hard to tell their children about it. When they do, some children don’t believe them.

Some children may only hear about the Khmer Rouge when their parents make them finish their food and say something like, “If you lived through the Khmer Rouge, you would know how important is food,” said Mychelle Balthazard, a co-researcher of a report published in January by the University of California, Berkeley. "If it’s like that, it wouldn’t be very interesting to them."

The report found that 81 percent of Cambodians under age 29 said their knowledge of the period was "poor or very poor." Eighty-four percent said what they knew came from families and friends.

Balthazard added that they probably are "more interested in MTV and technology than what happened 30 years ago."

Still, most of those surveyed said they want to learn more. Dum Sum An, for instance, said she wished she had time to be in the courthouse. "I would learn a lot from what Duch says to the judges," she said.

Duch is the nom de guerre of Kaing Guek Eav, who commanded the Tuol Sleng prison in the capital Phnom Penh, where as many as 16,000 men, women and children were tortured before being sent to be killed. At age 66, he is one of five Khmer Rouge leaders going on trial.

Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia and himself a survivor, said young people do care about the Khmer Rouge. "They want to understand it so they can bury it," he said.

"The story is difficult to transmit to the children: the cheating, the lying, pointing a finger at others to be executed to survive, stealing food to eat," said Youk Chhang, whose group collects evidence of the atrocities. "Most parents don’t tell this to their family."

At the prison, which is now a museum, 16-year-old Oeng Kim Heak walked past the blood stains and rows of shackles that chained prisoners to the floor.

She was brought to the prison with a group of students for a history lesson by U.S. Peace Corps volunteers. She stared at photographs of people who were interrogated, tortured and killed.

"My father told me and I didn’t believe him. I thought it was a story," she said.

"All these Khmer people died for no reason. I don’t want this to happen again."

The Ministry of Education and the Documentation Center have collaborated on publishing new textbooks, and Youk Chhang said the Khmer Rouge legacy will be included in the high school curriculum for the first time this year after 3,000 teachers are trained about it.

The court’s outreach office has reached some 750,000 of Cambodia’s 14 million people with information about the tribunal.

But Outreach Officer Chin Hemvichet says more people need to be reached outside the capital, and conceded that he wants funds for a traveling show with DVDs of the trial to blanket the country. "So far we don’t have a vehicle," he said.

But even in Phnom Penh some were indifferent. "I’m busy and I don’t want to know about that," said Leang Nalin, 22, who studies finance. "I know a little but I have never cared. My parents never talk about it," she said.

Restaurant caterer Yao Daung Dee, 42, said she believes Duch is already being punished.

"I am Buddhist. I trust in the law of karma. He killed a lot of people so I think he already has to pay back. I think he can’t sleep at night."

>Message 5 Essa

This is a pretty staggering thread and difficult to respond to. I have put off doing so for all the reasons people might suppose, but it keeps coming back to haunt me.

1-The feminist historian writing Wendy Doniger who has just published The Hindus An Alternative History make precisely the point that very often people don't learn from history because they do not, for one reason or another, remember it.

2-She also points out that Americans argue over the intent of the writers of the Constitution of only a few hundred years back and how much more difficult it is for the Hindus history that goes back thousands of years.

3-And the Spanish flu of 1918. So recent and yet so totally erased from collective memory

cf Wikipedia
The disease was first observed at Fort Riley, Kansas, United States, on March 4, 1918, and Queens, New York, on March 11, 1918. In August 1918, a more virulent strain appeared simultaneously in Brest, France, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and in the U.S. at Boston, Massachusetts. The Allies of World War I came to call it the Spanish flu, primarily because the pandemic received greater press attention after it moved from France to Spain in November 1918. Spain was not involved in the war and had not imposed wartime censorship.

"3-And the Spanish flu of 1918. So recent and yet so totally erased from collective memory"

Just a sidenote, but it hasn't entirely disappeared. My gran was nine years old and living in a farm near Rapid City, Manitoba. Her home was quarantined, with posters on the door, and the neighbours had to come to help with the livestock. Six or seven years ago a researcher interviewed her about it. Still, your general point still stands.

To quote one of my history professors "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

And I tend to agree with the fallacy of history repeating itself; its sloppy historians that would argue that. On the other hand, some of the repeating trends in history are rather odd.

History repeating reminds me of a Star Trek episode in which the Enterprise keeps blowing up, until they figure out how to send a message between loops using Data.

Did Santayana mean literally that history repeats itself or was he referring to 'repeating trends in history' ?

Perhaps it is just people doing the same stupid thing over and over each time they are faced with a similar situation.

cf. Wikipedia

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," (hence, "Santayana's Aphorism on Repetitive Consequences") from Reason in Common Sense, the first volume of his The Life of Reason.

Which takes us right back to Essa's posting...

Message 7: Cynara

Are you aware that you have a Fantastic opportunity for taking down some oral history on not just the Spanish flu but also the Depression?

If you don't wish to do so, possibly your Gran will consider a pen pal, because I would absolutely love to hear what her experiences were.

Then again, many older people do not want to share / talk of those difficult times.

Oh...you are so lucky.

Ur.

>Message 5: Essa

I believe the thread above is an important one. The following quote from Wendy Doniger's The Hindus is relevant in different respects.

689
"We …all of us…can of course learn from the errors of the past, though we are often condemned (pace Santayana) to relive it even when we remember it- indeed, sometimes precisely because we (mis)remember it.

-“Those who cannot rember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ Santayana’The Life of Reason, 1905-

and we must be on guard “ lest we forget’ as Kipling prayed. But we have lost our naïve faith in our ability to know our past in any objective way….At the end of the day, individuals and groups will have to make their decisions in the present, as they did in the past, on some basis other than history, such as given present conditions, what seems most humane, most compassionate, most liberating for the most people now.

In the Epilogue to George Bernard Shaw’s play Saint Joan (1923), Joan cries out ‘Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those who have no imagination?’ Surely history is one of the most important things for us to imagine and to realize that we are imagining. What an Utter waste it would be not to keep using our knowledge of a tradition, such as the Hindu tradition, that is so rich, so brilliantly adaptive. The profuse varieties of historical survivals and transformations are a tribute to the infinite inventiveness of this great civilization, which has never had a pope to rule certain narratives unacceptable. The great pity is that now there are some who would set up such a papacy in India, smuggling into Hinduism a Christian idea of orthodoxy; the great hope lies in the many voices that have already been raised to keep this from happening.

We can learn from India’s long and complex history of pluralism not just some of the pitfalls to avoid but the successes to emulate."

> 12 Yes. The bit about the young Cambodians surprised me. For some reason -- perhaps because it is so recent? -- I thought it would be something that was much more ... familiar, or a part of the present. Instead, it sounded like many of them knew almost nothing, not even the experiences of their own living elders, and regarded it, already, as sort of a vague and distant memory. That seemed rather surprising to me.

Edit (pressed "submit" too soon) -- It's encouraging, though, that some of them (in that article) wanted to learn more, and to hear about what had happened.