what are some examples of how we must remember the past in order to progress or not repeat history?

Answer 1

There's no danger of our remembering the past in the ways required to keep us from repeating it. However, if we could, we might be well advised to look at areas:

1. Spanish Inquisition - to keep religious zealots in their proper place,

2, The French Revolution - to remind us about the down-side of revolutionary fervor,

3. The Soviet Union - to further remind us,

4. Santa Fe Trail - The eroded, abraded gorges and arroyos along the length of it to remind us it's worth looking at the ground we're standing on occasionally, rather than devoting all our attention to the horizon and a future we influence, but don't comprehend.

5. The Chacoan/Mogollon, the Inca, the Aztec, the Mayan, to get our feet back on the ground when we indulge our fantasies that someone, once, 'had it right'.

6. Japan in the 1930s, to remind ourselves the most rabidly cruel torturers can be forgiven, rebuilt, and sell us television sets and automobiles with impunity.

7. Hiroshima, to remind us surprises can happen to the most devoted, arrogant and unwary.

8. The ruins of castles, fortifications, National Cemetaries to remind us these crises we're submerged in this moment will pass, as well, and be forgotten.

9. The DDT consequences of the 1960s to remind us science doesn't have all the answers, that sometimes it's better to put up with an insect than using the most expedient means of exterminating it.

10. Any man-made catastrophy, debacle in human history to remind us of the law of unforseen consequences. To remind us we aren't as smart as we tend to see ourselves. To remind us, no country ever attacked another thinking it would lose. No religious zealot ever killed or tortured anyone of another belief system believing his behavior would eventually be pointed to as proof of the falsehood of his beliefs. No scientist ever released an invention or development believing it might one day destroy his kids, or their kids.

Answer 2

The French waged an unsuccessful war against Vietnamese gurerillas for many years and finally gave up. The US thought it would do better. It didn't. Now the US is fighting a similar war in Iraq. They can't win, and they will eventually accept that.

Alexander thought he would rule forever. He died a young man and his empire crumbled. The Romans thought they would rule forever. So did Spain. So did Napoleon. The sun never set on the British Empire, until it did. Hitler called his empire the "Thousand-year Reich." It lasted about ten years. Now the US is trying to keep treading water faster and faster to stay on top of a fast-changing world, but eventually, they will fall.

We laugh at old-time doctors who bled their patients, prescribed mercury, arsenic and other poisons, or tried to "balance their humors." We have so little humility about our ignorance now, that we don't realize doctors a hundred years from now will heap the same scorn on us.

Answer 3

In 1929 the stock market crashed and the Great Depression followed. For 60 years people remembered how Republican economics had led the country to insolvency and unemployment and poverty and so they voted Democratic. Even Republicans who ran did so as Liberals, and the system worked quite well. Unfortunately it worked so well that people had the liesure time to indulge delusions like listening to Republican talk radio and felt so smug and secure from their economic comfort that they forgot about the lesson of the Great Depression. Republicans appealed to their racism, their bigotry, their homophobia, their contempt for women and drummed up irrelevant sham "issues" like gay marriage for example, and the public fell for it. So they elected (or maybe the supreme ct elected) the present freak show that has returned to the pre 1929 days, the shoot em up ride em cowboy wild west days and the economy is now over a trillion dollars in debt to Communist China because of it. It will take a miracle to get out of the grave the conservatives have dug for us. It is possible that America's days as leader of the world are over. Thank the conservatives and the fools that voted for them.

Answer 4

"Rome fell not because of an attack by a superior army, or an occupying horde. Rome was taken over and subdued by friendly occupiers who wanted to be like them...
The only other time a such a large friendly invasion has ocurred is now, along the US-Mexican border"

Answer 5

it isn't in the bloodshed, it's in your instinct. Destroy nothing and nature will take care of the rest of us and our world