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.
No comments:
Post a Comment