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Do we learn from history?

pontalba said:
If children cannot learn from the experiences of their parents or grandparents,
It doesn't seem to be within the human capability to learn from the past. At least not for the most part.
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Hah! Good one -- the new generation being the despair of the old. That seems to have been the case back to at least Roman times. Some things really do not seem to change.
 
If humans could not learn from the past, we'd still be hiding in caves and eating berries.
 
sparkchaser said:
If humans could not learn from the past, we'd still be hiding in caves and eating berries.
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The neanderthals spent the best part of a quarter million years doing that and while it may not have been very comfortable it was sustainable.

We've been around less than fifty thousand years and are on the brink of ecological collapse.

Homo Sapien - Wise Man...
 
Project-Syndicate is a great collection of political thought with an economic lean. An interesting hypothetical question about the similarities between 1914 and 2014.

The return of the sleepwalkers.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/co...parts-in-2014--can-avert-a-global-catastrophe

Only a year ago, any comparison between the summer of 1914 and today would have seemed artificial. The only parallel that could be drawn was limited to Asia: pundits wondered whether China was gradually becoming the modern equivalent of Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II, with mounting regional tensions over China’s territorial claims resembling, to some extent, the situation in the Balkans on the eve of WWI.

In the last few months, however, the global context has changed considerably. Given recent developments in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, one could reasonably say that the entire world has come to resemble Europe in 1914.
 
SFG75 said:
Only a year ago, any comparison between the summer of 1914 and today would have seemed artificial. The only parallel that could be drawn was limited to Asia: pundits wondered whether China was gradually becoming the modern equivalent of Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II, with mounting regional tensions over China’s territorial claims resembling, to some extent, the situation in the Balkans on the eve of WWI.
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Far fetched.

On the eve of World War One the Balkans were an excuse for the main players of the day to get it on. My thoughts on the modern equivalents well nobody wants to get dragged back into the middle eastern morass nowadays not even the USA, military intervention on Russian home turf... nah and China can do what it likes because it makes everything.
 
pontalba said:
Perhaps the question could be even broader. Do humans, in general, learn anything from the past?
If children cannot learn from the experiences of their parents or grandparents, who are hopefully their nearest and dearest, how can strangers learn from the past mistakes/experiences of people with whom they have no previous relationship, or even liking?

It doesn't seem to be within the human capability to learn from the past. At least not for the most part.
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Excellent points all the way around. Perhaps we do learn from history, but we fail to see nuances and similarities. In the case of the project-syndicate I posted, a reader could say that we don't have the network of alliances which led in part to WWI. At the same time, we do have increasingly likely odds of seemingly unimportant events which could lead to some great conflagration. Just as it was crazy to assume the death of an archduke could precipitate a world war, Japan and China are having a tiff about a disputed string of rocks in the Pacific. On the face of it, THAT should not be the face of conflict, but it could if fighter planes are somehow taken out of the sky or if there is a skirmish at sea between their respective navies. The author also pointed out that unlike WWI, the chances of a triggering event are greater as it is not just Europe which could cause such an event. The Middle East, Asia, and near East are now in play, they certainly weren't hotbeds of potential chaos in 1914. Another strong point from the article that deserves serious consideration.

I love to see history repeat itself in regards to nativism, modenr day know-nothingism, civil rights among different populations, not to mention wars bred from previous events.
 
SFG75 said:
At the same time, we do have increasingly likely odds of seemingly unimportant events which could lead to some great conflagration. Just as it was crazy to assume the death of an archduke could precipitate a world war, Japan and China are having a tiff about a disputed string of rocks in the Pacific. On the face of it, THAT should not be the face of conflict, but it could if fighter planes are somehow taken out of the sky or if there is a skirmish at sea between their respective navies. The author also pointed out that unlike WWI, the chances of a triggering event are greater as it is not just Europe which could cause such an event.
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The downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on the Russia/Ukraine border appears to fit the profile of a 'triggering event'.
 
I don't see anyone wanting to start WWIII over half of Ukraine. Well, that's not entirely true -- up until it was announced that there was only a half-American on board instead of twenty some Americans, Fox News had its viewers whipped up into an invade Russia fury.
 
What has Israel learned from history other than the application of brutality. What it started with bulldozers with regard to resettlement it continues with bombs and tanks. Genocide is evil, remember the holocaust.
 
Putin Demands That Ukraine Pull Its Troops From Southeast
"... Speaking with Angela Merkel of Germany on Thursday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia reportedly said Ukraine needed to initiate a “broad national dialogue” to resolve tensions." ....​
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Is it a good sign? I hope so, for both sides.

Ludwik Kowalski (see Wikipedia)​
 
On a personal level, yes, we learn from the past and history. As a human race, we're not learning anything, people are just too dumb, more interested in "celebrity" buts than taking action. It's just the way it is and I don't see that'll change anytime soon.
 
pontalba said:
Perhaps the question could be even broader. Do humans, in general, learn anything from the past?
If children cannot learn from the experiences of their parents or grandparents, who are hopefully their nearest and dearest, how can strangers learn from the past mistakes/experiences of people with whom they have no previous relationship, or even liking?

It doesn't seem to be within the human capability to learn from the past. At least not for the most part.
Click to expand...

The question, "Do we learn from history", is a bit ambiguous. It seems to be pointed at the problems arising from human greed for wealth and power, and the fact that there is a limited number of identifiably foreign people an established population will tolerate without backlash.
Since human nature does not appear to have changed much, at least over the last 10,000 years or so when we have some means to get a reading, these problems have stayed with us.

However, over-all, the characteristic that most distinguishes us from other animals is our ability to aggregate knowledge gained and pass it on to the next generation. Particularly since the advent of the scientific method, the growth of human knowledge has been enormous.
 
Indeed.
Perhaps then there are two questions: Where have we learned, and where have we not?
Bosons are new, wars are old.
 
In terms of race and social conditions, perhaps we have learned and things have improved considerably....not that there isn't room for improvement.

I'm not certain if we've learned about economics and whether or not allowing financial traders to run things is akin to allowing teenagers have whiskey and the car keys.
 
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