Condemned To Repeat History

“Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it,” George Santayana

” History is bunk,” Henry Ford

It is no coincidence, that the first quote was by a philosopher and the second by the Elon Musk of a century ago.

What’s going on in the world today is pretty much a repeat of world events as they have unfolded ad nauseam age after age. This should be clear to those who have any knowledge at all of what has happened in the past and what really has been going on recently.

I have written previously about fundamental human nature that drives our behavior and, in turn, the course of events. As part of the animal kingdom, we are driven a great deal more than we wish to believe by instinct.

There were times during the brief post-World War II Pax Americana when I dared to believe that the arc of history was turning in a positive direction, that the downtrodden would be lifted up and that democracy in the world and fairness for all its inhabitants might someday prevail. Today I am deeply saddened but not surprised by the failure of those idealistic imaginings to have come to fruition.

One of my English professors suggested to our class as we were studying Milton’s, “Paradise Lost,” that Satan is a much more interesting character than is God. Without him, without evil, denizens of Heaven and of Earth would pass their hours in a suffocating state of peaceful boredom. As a species, we require conflict to give interest and meaning to our existence. In order to sustain our interest every book, movie or play as well as our everyday lives must contain conflict .

Evolved people can find sufficient challenge and conflict in peaceful pursuits that do not harm their fellow man or the world, but for far too many of us, these are either unappealing, because they require effort, or are beyond our capabilities. The masses live out their lives preoccupied by trivia, engaged in petty squabbles and general discontent while they dedicate their time to the pursuit of fleeting pleasures. Today, much of this is experienced vicariously through passive absorption of fictional dramatizations or video presentations of actual events. Both of these are viewed as entertainment, as it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish one from the other.

It is no coincidence that our entertainment media are dominated by depictions of violence, horror, warfare and murder. Much of what passes for comedy is laden with coarseness and sadism. These provide easy outlets for our violent nature that is turbo-driven by the general discontent and anger that permeate times such as ours, times of rapid change that instill insecurity and anxiety in nations and in their inhabitants.

We are enraged and disappointed that the technological strides we have made have not eradicated the fundamental tragedies of the human condition. In fact, to a great extent they have exacerbated them. A huge swath of society is actively rejecting science and turning to superstition in search of relief. This movement will only add to our woes.

The day I wrote this, January 20, 2025, marked a day that sharply contrasted the oppositional elements at war in our minds and in our institutions. On one hand, striving for goodness, love and equality as we commemorated the birth of Martin Luther King. On the other greed, hatred and unfairness embodied in the installation into the White House of a man who is not fit to shine Dr. King’s shoes. American voters have made a choice worthy of a Greek tragedy. The die are cast. It may well be too late to escape the consequences of the decision made by indulging in our basic nature and in self-imposed ignorance.  

Commentators tend to draw parallels between Trump and Hitler. While these are valid, we can go back much further in history to view events that are not so dissimilar from our current day situation. Students of history may very well see parallels between Trump and Julius Caesar. Caesar, seeking to become a dictatorial ruler, conducted a program that was very similar to that which Trump is now pursuing. He circumvented the Senate and the norms that were in place to preserve the Roman Republic. This is why many senators participated in his assassination. I do not endorse assassination, but short of that, it is difficult to imagine the minority of rational members of Congress finding a way to rid us of Trump and his cohorts or to stop his assault on democracy. Picture this: Trump waddles down the aisle at the State of the Union address surrounded by congressional members. Suddenly a bloody Trump is heard to utter “Et Tu Mitch?” A pleasant daydream for many, but to what end? Caesars assassination led to Civil War and the end of the Republic, even in his absence.

In the postscript to his novel, “War and Peace,” Tolstoy opined that history is not made by individuals but is the culmination of inevitable events brought about by the nature of nations and of the individuals of whom they are comprised. Wouldbe leaders capitalize on and ride the wave of these forces. Tolstoy would see Trump merely as the instrument of a perverse and inevitable social movement that seeks the destruction of American democracy.

The arc of history is bending once again, as it so often has, toward evil. Too many Americans appear to be either resigned to, comfortable with, or simply unaware of that state of affairs and of what drives it. Denial of our nature is part of our nature. Thus, each generation in its turn repeats the behaviors of the previous ones, simply because that is the way we are. We are a mix of good and bad, but the bad too easily and too often holds sway over us while the inherent flaws with which nature has endowed us, especially the boredom resulting from a peaceful, gentle existence, dictate that it may ever be so.