Art & Culture

Why History repeats itself

Why History repeats itself

As surely as day follows night, history unfolds in the same patterns time and time again. The winners and the losers always seem to make the same decision and experience the same effects like so many of their forebears ( Example: Jews)

This is not exclusive knowledge. Any sincere mind will admit that men seem to lapse in so many ways, despite their better judgement. As a result, there is no end to the historical parallels from which we can draw analogies in our times.

Such parallels help give us an understanding of the context of our situation. Oswald Spengler truly believed that this new millennium would witness the collapse of the west and the rise of Ceasarianism, just as the Roman empire met its decline after the decadence of the republic.

But why does History comes in the cycle? If we can study the past so accurately, then why do we repeat their mistakes? Some might draw hopes from our vast stores of history. They might imagine that man learns from his own mistakes, creating a slow but sure process of enlightenment as all possibilities are exhausted.

But no amount of study of history can prevent the cycles. Those cycles are a representation of a natural cause and effect relationship within human collective psychology.

For any event, there are a small number of reasonable reactions, and such reactions generate other reasonable reactions. In the end, the only constant is the domination of the victor, and such domination comes at a cost.

History repeats itself because history is the story of man. Man will always have the same interest, desire and lust for power. This is not to be denied but learned.

“If there were a sympathy in choice, war, death and sickness did lay siege to it, making it momentary as a sound, swift as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night, that in the spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, and era a man hath power to say behold!’”

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