Do any of you think history really repeats itself? Can anyone give some examples of history repeating itself?!

Answer 1

Hey Nyema – great question. I hope you get some more thoughtful answers.

Ari – I like what you are saying. This is detailed in greater length in the book “Collapse” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_%28book%29 by Jared Diamond. In this book, the Pulitzer Award winning author describes five different reasons why civilizations have collapsed in the past:
1)Environmental damage caused by a society
2)Climate change (yes, there was plenty of climate change before greenhouse gas emissions)
3)Hostile neighbors
4)Decreased support by friendly neighbors
5)The quality of response (to a problem) by a society

As Ari has pointed out, when you have an isolated economy, like Easter Island, if you destroy the ecology, there is no one to bail you out! This can easily happen to our globalized economy if we destroy its ecology. There is no one to rescue Planet Earth, just as there was no one to rescue Easter Island.

More great themes in history have been pointed out in the book “Carnage and Culture” by Victor Davis Hanson. One of these themes is the brittleness of cultures lead by dictators. (Like Sadaam in Iraq.)

Since the soldiers of these cultures are *not* motivated by a sense of civic duty, but by either loyalty to, or fear of the dictator, their motivation disappears when the dictator disappears. Thus, dictatorships are very vulnerable to “decapitation strikes”.

The United States and Great Britain successfully used decapitation strikes to quickly defeat the Iraqi regular forces in the latest Iraq war, even though they achieved their goal by driving Sadaam from the battlefield, rather than by killing him outright.

Hanson goes on to illustrate how seven Western values make them very deadly fighting forces: political freedom, capitalism, individualism, democracy, scientific inquiry, rationalism, and open debate. Eastern civilizations lacking these values have historically been disadvantaged when pitted against a Western civilization currently adopting them.

One more example: the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Great_Powers by Paul Kennedy. In this book, the author points out how many nations have lost their status as great powers through over-spending, particularly on their military. This was recently illustrated with the collapse of the Soviet empire.

In summary, there are many examples of the great themes of history repeating themselves. It is comparatively rare for specific military campaigns, such as Napoleon's invasion of Russia, to be repeated. This is important to remember for a young country such as the US, which has a short history and thus is even less likely to repeat a specific episode.

The US can learn from the *general principles* repeated throughout history, but won't find too many specific repeated scenarios.

Answer 2

Sorry I can't find the source, but a clever historian pointed out that there was only one thing to be learned from history, namely that humans learn nothing from history.
Crusades are a good example, it's being tried again just now. Germany wanted to get rid of the jews by all means and got the whole world sucked into a war, Israel now wants to get rid of the palestinians...
Violence breeds violence. It doesn't solve anything. As long as humans don't learn that, history will repeat itself....

Answer 3

It doesnt repeat as the same ofcourse. It can be a guide to be used in the future events. Because History researchs events in an reason-result basis investigation, and when the reasons are same with the old events, the results probably would be the same...

Answer 4

History doesn't repeat itself - People repeat themselves.

Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it - ie make the same mistakes others made before them.

Answer 5

The rise and fall of civilizations. From ancient greece to modern times, nations begin to fail when they grow to big or are destroyed from the inside by opposing opinions.

Don't get me wrong, differing opinions should be welcomed and discussed, but once a nation loses its identity as a whole, core values (whatever they may be) begin to change and dissension arises. Eventually the system cannot support itself and it will fail.

Answer 6

Hmm... well, wars, of course. Then there is the Ice Ages.

There is Easter Island... they were in competition to build the biggest moai (wrong spelling, I'm assuming- pronounced mo-eye). They destoryed the island, taking all their resources and the hard work made them use more of their natural foods. They had to resort to caniballism to survive. Sound Familiar? We're all trying to have the best stuff- we're using all our oil, etc. We're heading in the SAME direction as the natives from Easter Island did.

Answer 7

Well, in some instances it can. Like the Crusades for example. There were several Crusades for the Holy Land, and I think that it is still going on but with better weapons

Answer 8

Everyone thinks that they are smarter than everyone else . Everyone thinksthey know where everyone else went wrong . This will never change, therefore history will always repeat.

Answer 9

Napoleon invaded Russia too late in the year, and kept advancing once his supply lines were stretched too thin. Hitler did the exact same thing 125 years later.

Answer 10

the jews seem to have problems in cycles. check out their histories.