Why are people so reticent about learning from the past?

Question

How is it that some people can take what the world has learned or earned, of the current knowledge available, and go on to minimize the repetition of the past mistakes and then others, simply ignore the past and then repeat those same mistakes over and over??

Answer 1

Kids learn about the past through history, bad history. Year after year the same history about the Holocaust, slavery, the dark ages, etc... are drilled into their heads. You are taught that the past was a terrible place to live instead of being taught respect for it. They are never taught that every scientific discovery we have today comes from the past. That is was a time of exploration and discovery. That they were real people with the same problems we have today. That these people made sacrifices for us today.

I am still amazed how past mathematicians proved theorems that all our technology today is based on with nothing more then their own heads. Try telling a teenager listening to an iPod at the mall that, and that two or three generations ago the mall was Normandy and his iPod was a rifle.

I think one of the things they lack in school is a hands on approach to history. When I was young the school board that I attended school under owned a farm and an old school house. We had to attend field trips there every year or two. The schoolhouse was 100% the real deal. No electricity, no paper just small chalk boards, old books, wood fireplace, old school punishment, and even a top hat wearing Irish accent speaking school master. We had to dress up in knickers and all and live life just like they did. If you were in high school, the same thing and you had to work on the farm before and after class. It was fun, but it put a real face on everything, you realized that history was real and that you should respect it.

Cheers.

Answer 2

This is a little like asking 'When did you stop shop lifting?'

First 'reticent'
This means 'temperamentally disinclined to talk, reserved: cool and formal in manner, reluctant to draw attention to yourself.

So the word is not used properly. The people you describe in the question are not reticent. They are not being the definition of the word. One group has gained wisdom and is benefiting from it, and the other group is not. So your question should be: "Why do some people learn from the past, and use their wisdom to live their life as wisely as possible, while others ignore the lessons of the past and make mistakes that have been by others in the past?"

Then the answer is clear: Some people are wise, and some people are fools.
;-D Pay attention is school, or end up a fool. (Did I just make that up, or has someone said it before me? Hmmm?)

Answer 3

Many people are too busy living their own individual lives to study history. Those who do study it, I believe, are not in power to really change anything. Those in power are often too stubborn to fill in their knowledge gaps by learning from those who know history. Plus, it all boils down to the politician worrying about getting re-elected, or having a job to survive after making hundred of thousands, getting "favors" from lobbyists and others with an agenda.
So those in power have to listen to their constituents, who often vote by their own pocket book, for the politician who comes off the best instead of substance, because their family has always voted a certain way, to counter someone else's vote they know, because that's the party they accidentally registered with, or they are 1-issue voters.
These voters may not read the papers and as you said, don't know history well enough to put the stories into a historical context through which to evaluate them. Also, most people probably don't read the article, but rather just the headline so they "know what's going on in the world."
Long answer..but that's my opinion.

Answer 4

The majority of people have an IQ of under 100, this may have something to do with it.

I think most people just don't want to see what is right in front of them, they need to be hit in face a few times before they get it.

Answer 5

Republicans

Answer 6

Because some people refuse to believe that anyone has the right answers but them, and some people have to touch the iron to know that its hot, no matter how many burns they see other people with.

Answer 7

b/c the mistakes in the past can be so horrid that you don't want to think of them. ie the holocuast and now Difur.
we think that we are above it all, we are more mature and more intelligent. but all in all, we're just as bad as they were. we can be just as smart as the sapiens.

Answer 8

Because some people think that they are smarter than the people who came beore. They think they can do something that no one else could do. Sounds pretty arrogant, doesn't it?

Answer 9

History DOES repeat itself..that life.!