chapter 24

The book ends very strong, asking us the question,” what is history all about?”, of course we discussed last week about those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, but at the same time those who fail to know the past are doomed to know if they are affected by the same thing that happened in the past.  It’s great to look to the past for answers as if to put us in the shoes of our ancestors and wonder how would they respond to a conflict or to even just remember what they went through in order for us to be here today.

Many great thinkers of the past have justified why we looked to the past for answers, but in no way should we always look to the past for answers, it should be a way for us to figure it out and then apply that knowledge to our existing knowledge and then make an informed decision.

All in all, history will always be there for us, good or bad everything we need to know is right there and available.

chapter 21,22,23

I’ve never been a fan of the words, “ those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” I’m more afraid of those who do remember the past, they remember how said event did not work in the past, they rebrand it and add their variation to it in order to give it to us in the present. I would like to say that those who did not know the past in the first place are doomed to become a victim of the same event. We look at the events of World War II and the atrocities Hitler imposed amongst the Jewish people, even though it is not to the extreme of today, many people remember the teachings of the third Reich and impose these atrocities of their fellow man.

Hindsight is of course 20/20 we all fall victim to this. It is easier for our advanced selves to judge our former selves with such reverence. We love it, we have learned so much from learning the hard way that we look back and say, “ ugh, those uncivilized humans” we look at the downfall of the USSR and note how communism destroyed that society, well, I remember back to my financial management class in which we explore the decision making skills of CEO’s. What we found is that a CEO will make whatever decision he/she has to make for the best interest of the company with the available information at that time. The same can go for any country and any president, unless of course they are serving their own self-interest.

To move into the next session, I rather enjoy the unfinished stories. They offer discussion on the future and allow us to shape it accordingly rather than the over-analyzation of the past in which we ho hum about what other possibilities a leader could have made. Even though how our ancestors started is vastly different, we have the ability to continue their legacy.