Does the past effect us?

My W.o.W. today got me to thinking. This is what it was:

Originally posted by Samurai Guy
Experience and Science teach us this: nations and government have never learned a thing from history, or acted in accordance with anything they might have learned from it.

Does the history influence us? Do we pay attention to the mistakes of the past?

Sometimes, but not often enough. If people learned from history then we never would have had Bush as president, people would have learned from the poor job his father did and voted for a better candidate.

Very nice point.

Then why are we forced to look to the past and see what events happened if we pay no heed to it?

Because we should pay attention to it. And we are taught the past so some of us may be smart enough to learn from it.

a remark about your quote:

you make it sound history is a science, this is not so black and white as you make it seem.

First of, when we start at Leopold Von Ranke (19th century), the creator of positivism, you can't claim it's a science since he only wanted written (administrative) sources and in his conclusions he always stayed on the facts, not on any notes or comments on it.

It's with Lamprecht, Robinson and Berr it changed till we get to Annals.
There they say that we should make history a "true science" so they compare events: the french revolution, the american revolution, the russian revolution, the brabant revolution, ...
and they write a synthesis (I'm not sure that's the correct word) about their findings and give their theory about it.

But those two, is that enough to count it as a science? I asked TO this one actually a time ago and she gave a website to me where it says that it's not really a science

People study history to try and not make the same mistakes, so that hopefully history won't repeat itself. So of course the past affects us.

The past affects us regardless of whether we learn from it or not. Also history is not in predicting events, but trends, and often times is tough to find these trends until events are past. They can hypothesize, but its some what outside of thier realm of expertise.

America should still have known better than to elect Bush II.

Technically they didn't. 😉

Originally posted by Silver Stardust
People study history to try and not make the same mistakes, so that hopefully history won't repeat itself. So of course the past affects us.

all the past mistakes are affecting on us.
and no one can change it.
it is just sad, how ignorant some people are.

edit. yes i meant affect. thanks for pointing my mistake out.

I'm guessing you mean "affect" & not "effect"

without a paste there wouldnt b a presant and with a presant there wouldnt b a futur..........Cant rememver were i herd that from 😑

Originally posted by ArrghPirateGirl
without a paste there wouldnt b a presant and with a presant there wouldnt b a futur..........Cant rememver were i herd that from 😑

And to think i was worried about the grammatical difference between Affect and Effect.

😆

Oh god, my eyes! That was horrid.

Originally posted by Clovie
edit. yes i meant affect. thanks for pointing my mistake out.

I wasnt aiming the correction at you clove - it was at the forum question in general - i {think} Sam may have meant "Does the past affect us?" in the first place.

I enjoyed History and Ancient stories. But for me the past is gone and what matters is the present. Eventually the present will become past and the upcoming future will also moved into the past. For me the stories of our elder ancestors are very important, not only for educational purposes, but also they are important in shaping our experiences.

Even so, if we are studying the past, why are we repeating so many mistakes?

Because no matter what.......humans are not perfect. We made mistakes in the past. We make mistakes today. And we will make mistakes in the future. At least that's how I see it SG.

>> Does the history influence us?

yes

>>Do we pay attention to the mistakes of the past?

sometimes

I think we could learn more from the past, if we had political leaders that had broad perspective, and were learned in the ways of the ancient. It's a typical mistake that alot of new thing happening is dealt with in a bad way, because it is not recognized in it's essence as something old - something we could solve better with applied wisdom.

Originally posted by Paxelius
Do we pay attention to the mistakes of the past?

sometimes

I think we could learn more from the past, if we had political leaders that had broad perspective, and were learned in the ways of the ancient. It's a typical mistake that alot of new thing happening is dealt with in a bad way, because it is not recognized in it's essence as something old - something we could solve better with applied wisdom.

That is what I mean. If we applied the knowledge from past mistakes, we would not have the issues of the present.

Originally posted by WindDancer
Because no matter what.......humans are not perfect. We made mistakes in the past. We make mistakes today. And we will make mistakes in the future. At least that's how I see it SG.

Of course we are flawed. We will make mistakes, but that is why we document said mistakes, to avoid making them in the future. But, this is apparently not the view of some. (Nobody in particular.)