Revisiting History so the Guest of Future Doesn't Surprise You

"History is a race between education and catastrophe". -H.G. Well

Humans and most animals rely on prior experiences to give them an idea of what will happen if they commit an action in the future. A toddler who places his or her hand on a flame will, after that incident, more likely than not, stay away from touching a flame; the memory of what happened before will be enough to stop them. But what happens if the toddler touches the fire and doesn't remember the entire incident? The attraction of the fire draws him or her to it again and the baby will probably touch the flame again and feel the same pain once more. And each time they forget, they'll probably repeat it.

Individually, our memories of personal experiences shapes our decisions in the future. However, socially speaking, history (our collective memories) tends to be forgotten resulting in our (social) repeating of putting our hands on the flames and burning ourselves. As a collective society, we've become amnesiac when it comes to the experiences of history and it has led us to a condition where we are increasingly suffering on a day to day basis. We've lived this way for so long that we believe it's a normal thing to go through the things we face on the street, at work (slave jobs) and anywhere in between. Yet this way of suffering is not a normal thing and we need to revisit history to understand this.

Regardless of how scary it is, how much it makes us terrified, we need to see what's happened not so we can write homework assignments but so we can take the best of historical events and figures and bring them into this world and so we can see the worse of history and prevent it by all means from being repeated. There's truth and wisdom in Maya Angelou's words "History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again."