Is history repeating itself??

Question

I need to write an 3 paragraph essay and the teacher just gave me this topic...
"Does history repeat itself" ? she said it could be any history events that had happend before...I don't even have any idea of what to write about.......and I don't know how to start the first paragraph.......ahhhhhhh!I hate this class!!!I hate this teacher !!!!and she hates me too!!......T_Tanyways...can you please help me with this..please..~~?

Answer 1

History, like the weather, doesn't precisely repeat itself, but it is cyclical.
My understanding of this was much enhanced by reading the works of Strauss and Howe, such as their book "Generations."
History develops in cycles lasting maybe 80-100 years, and each cycle divided into 4 generations.
You might look at the article on their work in Wikipedia, to see if the concepts might help you.
According to them, we are now in the "unraveling" time, analogous to Autumn in the seasonal cycle. There is abundance and decay; we are heading for the Crisis, analogous to Winter, when there is major conflict leading to reorganization of the world. The last Crisis was WWII; this was followed by the High (Spring), marked by growth and prosperity; the Awakening (Summer), marked by a search for personal fulfillment and neglect of children; the unraveling era (Autumn), in which the emerging adults struggled to put some order into their world and nurture their children; and finally the global Crisis (Winter) is coming, in which we will have to fight to survive, and reorganize things again.
They wrote the book "Millennials Rising" (about the rising generation) before the year 2000, and I have been struck by the accuracy of their predictions. For instance, they predicted that youth fashions would appear that had a certain uniform appearance, with a suggestion of great deeds. When I read this, I thought of all the camo stuff that is in style now; desert camo, forest camo, girlie pink camo, city digital camo, blue camo. And look how popular the martial arts are. Not to mention all the FDNY gear...
The youth of today will give birth to the next hippies, after the Crisis....

Answer 2

Well, you could write about your older brother hating this assignment so history is repeating itself, but you will probably get a better grade if you look at the number of times the same people have been at war with each other, such as the two religions in Ireland or the Germans and the French. If you want something less well known, look at what happened in the Balkans down though the years ending most recently in the Bosnian-Serbian slaughter and the breaking up of Czechoslovakia where people don't even agree on what to call old slaughters.

Answer 3

History is always repeating itself, only it's always different.

This is the big paradox of history. You're not going to figure it out in a three paragraph essay, but you might as well start thinking about this and give it your best shot, based on what you can write now.

Write your essay as a compare and contrast essay. What's similiar, what's different, about now and the past? What was the big concern of the recent past? Ask an adult you know, ask your teacher. Is this still the same concern? What's different about this? You can play the game of asking these questions about anything, past or present, or between two parts of the past? And if you get into it, you'll have fun with this game, and you may even get to like history. Anyway, it's worth a shot.

Answer 4

Looking at history, hatred has always been a driving force. In the Americas, the Natives were called savages by the Europeans. The Europeans felt that was cause to force them to work, rape their women, and give them deadly diseases like small pox. Then you have the introduction of African slavery. Slavery in the Americas went on for about 200 years. What makes the institution of slavery in the Americas so peculiar was its brutality. The slaves were treated just as badly as the Native Americans. At the same time you had Indians in India being exploited by the British as well. And, though I am not so sure of the timing in history the Asians didn't fair so well especially with the French. When you get to the 20th century then we have the Holocaust. And, in Hiroshima, Japan, America had a nuclear bomb go off. So as long as there is hatred of some kind history will always repeat itself.

Answer 5

When people speak of history repeating itself they usually mean that we've done something again or gotten into a bad situation again because we didn't pay attention the first time and learn from the past.

I'm sure a great many people are saying it about the Iraq war - comparing it to the Vietnam war. Both are/were unpopular wars where the public felt deceived about the reasons given for being there in the first place.

Before we invaded Vietnam the American people were told we were fighting to protect the world from Communism and keep Communism from spreading. It was considered evil (the red menace (Communist China), the Iron Curtain (Russia) and was used to scare the public into supporting a huge military buildup, the cold war with the Soviet Union and the Vietnam war. In reality, there were economic and strategic reasons for us to be there but those weren't the reasons used to get us there- fear was. Just like Iraq. Fear of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism were used to get us there but there are good economic reasons to be there- oil for one.

Or in a completely different area: how about the use of minority or oppressed members of the population for medical experimentation-as guinea pigs basically. The Nazis in Germany used the Jewish prisoners in concentration camps for medical experiments, considering them to be 'less than human'. History definitely repeated itself in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment when American doctors used African American men as guinea pigs to study syphilis by knowingly allowing them to go untreated and watching the progress of the disease.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/143.html
There are other examples as well:
http://www.rbs2.com/humres.htm#anchor367601

Answer 6

you can go a bunch of different ways. Rebecca has a good answer, for starters .. you can flesh 3 ppgs out of history not repeating itself just by the nature of time pretty easily. If you are religous you can talk about biblical progression. If you are not, you can talk about evolution and learning what came before through fossil records.

You can say no it doesn't and talk about technology (ie swords and armor vs tanks and airplanes and make the argument that further advances in technology prevent history from repeating itself). You could also flip that around and say yes, history repeats itself in that wars over territory/religion/resources are always happening, only the tools change (swords vs tanks).

Focus on a specific aspect (war for land, technology, space exploration), but expand on it as much as you can. ie, history doesn't repeat itself: mankind's need to explore further and further .. proving the world is round, hubble telescope, reaching the moon, astronauts in generals, mars flybys/robots, genetic research, cloning ... or, history does repeat itself: mankind's need to explore further and further .. proving the world is round, hubble telescope, reaching the moon, astronauts in generals, mars flybys/robots, genetic research, cloning - except the tools for exploration have just gotten more sophisticated.

just pick one narrow area and go to town. there is no wrong answer.

Answer 7

Hi ...

You can look at history and find commonalities.

Sometimes history repeats itself because there is unfinished business. (see WWI --> WWII) and 1st Gulf War (invasion of Quwait) and the Invasion of Iraq.

Show the points that are similar - resource control, nationalism, etc.

There is no need to show points that contradict your thesis.

It is an easy assignment. I hope you'll do well. If you email me your essay, I'll proofread it and give you an opinion.

Answer 8

History continually repeats itself. Successive generations easily forget what their elders went through and make the same mistakes over and over again. That's why it is important to understand history.

Answer 9

Yes, history often repeats itself. Civilizations rise and then fall into decline. Mesopotamia (sp?) was the first, then Rome, then the Ottoman Empire, Europe and now the United States. How much longer do we have?

Answer 10

Yes I think it does sometimes. I think Jason is on the right track. Many Civilizations start out with great leaders and Ideas, once they get too large and complacent they slide into extravagance laziness and hedonism. America may have seen it's greatness and started its downward spiral toward it's eventual end.