Thread: Do we need to study history?

There is one problem with learning from history. We bring our own modern bias into them. We didn't live then and hence, cannot truly appreciate what those people have learned. The Arabs learned right after Baghdad to throw open the doors once the Mongols showed up. Is that a proper lesson? Or is the proper lesson to learn how to kill your enemy down to the last dog?

We study and learn things we can understand. Things we cannot understand we just termed them as non-understandable or label them as having no need to understand them. We called the Nazis inhuman monsters while refusing to understand how could a family man go out and butcher women and children. We assumed we're the good guys that we can never be like them ... and yet our side dropped two nukes.

On this very board is a thread in which we discussed the Western response to a possible Islamic terrorist nuke. I say a large majority of non-military people could not comprehend how soldiers were perfectly able to calmly map out how we go about retalliating.

And yet, less than 30 years ago, the idea we would've burned in a nuclear fireball was an accepted possibility. We imagined nuclear war and avoided its horrors. And yet, I see people today refusing to imagine it simply because it's beyond their capability to accept it.

People must never say never. We couldn't do this or we wouldn't do that.

We do and will!

If there is one thing history teaches, is often we (mankind) are unable to learn from the lessons of history. How often we screw the pooch, and then engage in a madcap race to rectify the consequences of our actions; or in some cases inaction.

Is this a rhetorical question? (I hope!) T

Originally Posted by Tagwyn

Is this a rhetorical question? (I hope!) T

There's no answer to that!!

I've taken a more philisophical approach to studying history. I call it the "blind man & the elephant." (Yes, many of you might have heard a similar analogy...)

Studying history, let's say a historical battle for example, is alot like trying to describe an elephant while blindfolded. If all you do is "read" (with your fingers) the first thing you touch, then that's all you can really describe (or use for your high school research paper). But if you "read" more of the elephant, from different angles, you tend to get a more complete "picture" of it. I feel it's the same way when studying history. If all you read is what's in your high school or college text books, that's all you really know about the topic. One must research more, from different angles, different sides, different viewpoints, if one is to really try to grasp a more full understanding of the topic.

In our own Civil War, the Union was fighting because the South seceded. The South seceded over State's rights, & referred to it as the "War of Northern Agression." If you don't look at the war, & it's separate battles, from both sides, I feel you're not getting anywhere near a complete picture of what really happened.

Just my opinion...

Originally Posted by Skull6

In our own Civil War, the Union was fighting because the South seceded. The South seceded over State's rights, & referred to it as the "War of Northern Agression." If you don't look at the war, & it's separate battles, from both sides, I feel you're not getting anywhere near a complete picture of what really happened.

Just my opinion...

Are you sure that's why the Civil War started? Or were you told this at school! Or perhaps you made an effort to find out why it started

I apologize. I meant that those were the "mantra" reasons we were given in school as to the root causes. In reality, it's a bit more complex.

One of the items I've learned since I've expanded my studies past the "mantra" I was fed while in high school was that one cannot view all the Confederate Generals as basically "bad guys"--as we in States north of the Mason-Dixon line were fed. General Lee was one of the more noble & militarily-capable men of BOTH sides, in my opinion.

P.S. I also learned why there used to be such a rivalry between VMI and West Point--"opposites" attract while "likes" repel.

Originally Posted by dave lukins

There's no answer to that!!

D'oh!!!You beat me to it .

In the classroom, the acceptable response on this question that the professor wants to hear is the following: If we do not study history, then how do we know where we came from? However that particular answer works in an Ethnic Studies class and applies to cultural and societal formations. Those formations of course mutate through time due to ideology and progression.


I find that references to a melting pot is a misnomer. cultures rarely melt. They are usually forced to be in step with the majority. I prefer to think more along the lines of the Salad Bowl theory. All in one place, tolerant to
be side by side for a short time and covered up with majority wishes.

To study history, is to study the good and the bad of humanity's past. History is more than just dates, names, places, battles.... History is understanding how those dates, names, places, battles go on to effect other aspects of the world.

Do we need to learn history? You bet.

Why? because it is the ultimate authority on human behaviour. History tells us about ourselves - what we have done, what we can do, good and bad.

It is somethimes possible to learn specific lessons from history, but this is fraught with danger. Whenever I see people (usually conservative supporters of the war in Iraq) making references to Chamberlain & Munich in criticism of others I shudder a bit. Anthony Aden used the same 'lessons' to justify the unecessary & politically disastrous Suez operation in 1956.

At the more extreme end of this practice, it was once fashionable to try to find 'laws' of history - something at which Marx excelled. This foolish endevour has fortunately been thrown into the dustbin of history.

To truly derive value from history it is necessary to engage with it all different levels. The grand narrative with its maps, chaps & broad sweep; the personal account with its microperspective on events; the postmodern view that shakes us out of our comfortable assumptions about what history is & how it is constituted.

We need all of these perspectives because they help us to learn how to form our own perspectives. It is the ability to help us do this that is history's great contribution to our lives.

Originally Posted by Officer of Engineers

There is one problem with learning from history. We bring our own modern bias into them. We didn't live then and hence, cannot truly appreciate what those people have learned. The Arabs learned right after Baghdad to throw open the doors once the Mongols showed up. Is that a proper lesson? Or is the proper lesson to learn how to kill your enemy down to the last dog?

We study and learn things we can understand. Things we cannot understand we just termed them as non-understandable or label them as having no need to understand them. We called the Nazis inhuman monsters while refusing to understand how could a family man go out and butcher women and children. We assumed we're the good guys that we can never be like them ... and yet our side dropped two nukes.

On this very board is a thread in which we discussed the Western response to a possible Islamic terrorist nuke. I say a large majority of non-military people could not comprehend how soldiers were perfectly able to calmly map out how we go about retalliating.

And yet, less than 30 years ago, the idea we would've burned in a nuclear fireball was an accepted possibility. We imagined nuclear war and avoided its horrors. And yet, I see people today refusing to imagine it simply because it's beyond their capability to accept it.

Refusing to accept what, sir?

And about Nazism, it is true, because most people dismiss Nazism, Stalinism and the similar as evil without even trying to understand it. It is the misunderstanding of the mechanisms that brought and kept it into power that can be dangerous.

Originally Posted by entropy

Refusing to accept what, sir?

That it is damned easy to become monsters ourselves.