Does History Repeat Itself?

The question of whether or not history repeats itself is often asked in drawling contemplative tones as though it were a weighty philosophical question. Actually, it is a silly question. Clearly history does not repeat itself otherwise we would have multiple Golden Ages of Greece, multiple Roman Empires, and pyramids all over the place. Travel in China would be impossible because of Great Walls across the landscape blocking roads. It’s bad enough today when tenth graders have to read Plato’s Republic. If they had to compare volumes of The Republic from different instances of the Golden Age of Greece, nobody would ever finish high school. Unemployment would go up. Economies would crash. Surely it would be the end of civilization as we know it. OK, maybe I got a little carried away. But, it merely goes to support that notion that the idea of history repeating itself is prima facie ridiculous. Prima facie is Latin for “on the face of it” or “at first glance”. Using Latin phrases helps shore up your credibility and balances any predictions you may have made about the end of civilization.

But the more serious question is – do the patterns of history repeat themselves. There answer here is a qualified yes and there is abundant evidence to support this claim. There are cycles of feast and famine. There are economic cycles. Empires rise and fall. There are times of expansion, either economic or geographic, and times of contraction. Despots rise and fall. Some get their due and some don’t. There are repetitive patterns to history because we look at history and organize it, to the extent possible, into repetitive patterns. And the patterns continue to repeat, if imperfectly. And therein lays the rub.

Patterns do repeat and can be used to predict future events. And the veracity of those predictions depends on how well the patterns fit and how well we recognize their imperfection.  The patterns of history are the key to predicting the future. But, figuring out how to identify and apply them correctly is the challenge.My approach to predicting the future which is limited to the emergence of technology and key ideas is based on recognizing patterns. As this blog unfolds, I will attempt to explain how that works.