Those who do remember the past are also doomed to repeat it!

Spanish born American Philosopher, George Santayana, is known for his most famous saying, “Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it”, assuring us that only those who have read the darkness of the past can lead us towards the brightness of the future.

Except, they don’t! In fact, some of the people who have read the past go out of their way to make the same mistakes.

Hitler is possibly the most famous example (not of people leading us to a bright future, obviously). The Nazi leader invaded Russia, or more accurately the Soviet Union, urged by a desire to provide the German people with Lebensraum or “living space”, completely ignoring the historical lessons learned from Napoleon’s failed attempt at conquering the frozen Russian landscape. One might think that the Nazis did not dwell too much on Napoleon’s failed campaign but the historical evidence suggests otherwise. In fact, the two campaigns were started on almost the same date (Napoleon started his campaign on June 24th, 1812 while Hitler launched his campaign on June 22nd, 1941).

Speaking of Napoleon, the actually-not-too-short French emperor lead the French Campaign in Egypt between 1798 and 1801. The reasons for the campaign, which ended in the deaths of some thirty-thousand french soldiers and did little to further French influence, were many but chief among them was Napoleon’s desire to emulate his personal hero, Alexander the Great. Alexander conquered Egypt as part of his plan to weaken the Persian empire. Napoleon on the other hand had no quarrel with the Ottoman Empire that controlled Egypt at the time, and he certainly had no shortage of more immediate threats to deal with in Europe.

Let us add one more link in this chain. Alexander the Great in turn viewed himself as a new Achilles, the maybe fictional hero from the Greek epic The Iliad. Alexander read the Iliad and saw Achilles’s glory but not the warning against pride the epic sought to portray. He chased the Persian King Darius all the way to northeastern Iran, only to find him killed by his kinsman Bessus, whom Alexander chased to modern day Afghanistan, all just for the glory of it. In the end, Achilles’s pride lead him to death by an arrow; Alexander’s pride lead him to death by poison.

Those how do not remember history are doomed to repeat it; but remembering history is not enough. Memorizing dates, names, battles, will only get you so far. The goal of teaching history is not to teach What, but Why. Only then can we stop repeating the mistakes of history and move forward to a brighter tomorrow.