“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – Spanish philosopher George Santaya
I am not shy about offering my opinion on diverse topics, offering my perspective, based on my journey.
Though my way of seeing life and spirit may differ from that of others, I feel it necessary to share mines with you. I share so openly to strengthen my own faith. I proclaim my convictions, sometimes audaciously. I also do so because I believe that most people, especially Black people only hear their arguments. They preach to each other, preaching to the choir, themselves.
History repeats itself. I provide several examples in this post. I present my perspective visually, and in Poetrimony, in a video that I produced.
History Repeats – It’s Already Been Told – History, The Remix | World Relations – Seasons As My Teacher – Kevy Michaels
This is a video about history repeating itself in many ways, including Genocide, Pandemics, School Shootings, Economic Crashes, Military Miscalculations, Mass Extinctions, Racism, Assassinations, etc. It’s Already Been Told is an original poem, cast to jazz music, and vivid visuals.
“History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.” – Sydney J. Harris
History repeats on various dimensions. As with most things in life, I tend to not restrict myself to a one-dimensional view.
We repeat behaviors because of human nature. Just as animals have instincts, so do humans. We desire security, happiness, sustainability, love, and power. We act these desires out often the same way depending on circumstances. Fights in the name of power, wealth, protection, and God have played out throughout history. We are both instinctively good and evil.
On a spiritual level, particularly with regard to holy scriptures, I am on the fence as to whether the Bible, Quran, or other holy books predict the future. I, in distinction, believe that they predict human behavior; they map it. I’ve mentioned in an early post that the bible presents the DNA of human action and emotions, in addition to presenting God, of course. Man’s (and woman’s) actions are mapped out in the bible and other holy books, and we simply follow our spirits, as scripted, whether for good or bad. In this way, we often repeat historical actions.
We are also creatures of habit. We do the same things over and over because we find comfort in making choices that we’ve made in the past. It becomes a part of our character. If our lives were viewed as a movie, we would certainly be the star character. Everyone else, supporting actors and extras. And, the star usually doesn’t change his/her character, but rather gets deeper into it, when on screen, and sometimes offscreen.
To complicate the choices that we make historically, media, government, advertising, and AI now decide for us. This is frightening, because, in the future, our choices and actions may not be solely based on our instincts or intuition. We may become even more programmed by AI to lead us to act as AI desires.
Fortunately, every once in a while, someone, maybe you, is faced with a life-altering event and it drives them to go against the grain, go against the past choices they’ve made. This is often when history, whether personal or global, has an opportunity to change. Bravery and unbreakable beliefs often mark change in our lives, and in our family’s lives. Pick a messenger, prophet, or a character in your family for example.
It’s important to include families in the mix. Families repeat their histories, generation after generation for all the motivations mentioned above. And likewise, not until a “disruptor” shakes things up in that family, does history have a possibility of changing. I am a disruptor in my family.
With regard to history, I focus more on the aftermath of repeated historical events. What happens after these milestone events is what really informs me. For example, after the 1918 pandemic came the Roaring 20’s, after 911, surveillance and AI, after Slavery, Jim Crow, and after sexual freedom and decadence, came AIDS. Our world is changing before our eyes post coronavirus. Vaccines are a norm now, government disregards civil liberties, and everything from how we educate, to medically examine, shop, date, and meet has changed.
History shows that one of our human qualities is that we are adaptive. Though many may perish during historic eras, the ones who remain adapt well. We are adapting so well and fast to Trump, COVID19, Police Killings, Politics, Social Media, and in our families, that we really don’t know what to expect in the next year or so. We do not know if life will return to normal or if this is the new normal. I believe that we will adapt to a new normal, just as animals, forests, oceans, and all living things are adapting to our everchanging Earth. Kevy
“History repeats itself and that’s just how it goes.” – J. Cole
Here are examples and supporting posts on current events which are simply remixes of things that occurred in the past.
Examples
9 That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun. 10 Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in ancient times before us. – Ecclesiastes 1:9-11 – New King James Version
…About History…
- Continuity is necessary to progress — or, in normal-people words, we must remember stuff from our past in order to do it better in the future.
- But if history is full of warnings, we haven’t always been very good at heeding them. The past is bursting with people who made mistakes similar to those of their predecessors, and, lo and behold, they suffered similar consequences.
- There are plenty of examples throughout history of repeat tragedies. Here are some of the worst.
What are some examples of history repeating itself?
Some examples of history repeating itself are Napoleon and Hitler invading Russia, The Great Recession and The Great Depression, extinction events and the sinking of great ships like the Tek Sing, the Vasa, and the Titanic.
What does “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” mean?
This is a famous line by American public commentator and humorist, Mark Twain. The phrase describes the fact that history may not repeat the exact same events, but the same patterns tend to emerge over time.
What does “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce” mean?
Karl Marx said this to draw attention to the truth that when history repeats itself for the first time, it’s a tragedy. But when it repeats itself again, it becomes almost comical because people still haven’t learned the lesson. When Marx said this, he was referring to the fall of Napoleon I and the later reign of his nephew Napoleon III.
“Art, when destroyed can never be replaced, yet history repeats itself.” – Clarence H. Burns
10 Worst Ways History Has Repeated Itself – Clint Pumphrey & Melanie Radzicki McManus – Oct 26, 2021
- Military Miscalculations – “Never get involved in a land war in Asia!” Or, at the very least, get out of Russia before winter. That’s the lesson both Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler learned during their failed attempts to attack the massive Eurasian country. In June 1812, Napoleon assembled an army of 600,000 to invade Moscow and on the return trip, however, temperatures plummeted to -34.6 degrees Fahrenheit (-37 Celsius), freezing the beleaguered soldiers’ lips together and killing thousands of horses. Fast-forward to 1941 as Hitler’s army sent his troops into battle ill-prepared for the impending winter. Again, plummeting temperatures and a lack of warm coats and hats meant many returned home without ears, noses, fingers, and even eyelids
- Economic Crashes – Real estate bubbles were a shared aspect of both the Great Depression and Great Recession. In late 2007 the United States economy went into a tailspin. The stock market dropped like a lead balloon while the only thing going up, it seemed, was unemployment. Predictably, commentators soon began to make doomsday comparisons between the “Great Recession,” as it became known, and the Great Depression of the 1930s. However, the Great Depression was much worse. Its 43-month duration made the 18-month Great Recession seem mild by comparison.
- Assassinations– The comparisons people draw between the assassinations of presidents Lincoln and Kennedy are mere coincidences. Yep, both presidents were shot on Fridays with a fatal bullet to the head. Their successors were both named Johnson; Andrew Johnson was born in 1808 and Lyndon Johnson in 1908. Both assassins — John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald — have 15 letters in their names. And, most peculiarly, Booth escaped from a theater and was captured in a warehouse (well, a tobacco shed), and Oswald fled a warehouse and was caught in a theater
- Genocide– When people think of genocide, chances are their minds quickly turn to the Holocaust. But sadly there have been as many as two dozen instances of genocide since the Holocaust. Take Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, which, between 1975 and 1979, killed as many as 2 million political dissidents — a shocking one-third of the country’s population. Just 15 years later, during a 100-day span in 1994, Rwanda’s Hutu government killed between one-half and 1 million Tutsis. Such crimes continue into the 21st century, as some leaders have accused Syrian president Bashar al-Assad of killing his own people to retain power. Look at what is happening in Africa, Ethiopia, and Lybia in particular.
- Pandemics– It’s called a pandemic, and it’s happened more than once in our history. One that’s still pretty well-known, despite the passage of several hundred years, is the Black Death, aka the plague. The plague originated in Asia, reaching Europe by the late 1340s, where it killed a staggering number of people, estimates range from 25 million to 100 million. Another pandemic began just four decades ago and continues to claim lives today: AIDS. This disease originated in Africa as early as 1920 but didn’t spread worldwide until the 1980s and 30 million to 42 million have died. While the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic that began in late 2019 won’t kill anywhere near that many people, it has killed 5 million worldwide
- Shipwrecks– Everyone knows the basic story of the Titanic. In 1912 it set sail on its maiden voyage from England to New York. The ship went down along with 1,503 of the passengers and crew. Decades later, in December 1987, the ferry Doña Paz departed Tachloban in the Philippines bound for Manila. It was packed with people traveling for the Christmas holiday: some 4,000 passengers on a ship built to carry only about 1,400. Disaster struck in the Tablas Strait when the ferry collided with an oil tanker, causing as many as 4,375 to perish. It has called “Asia’s Titanic”
- Tornadoes– Tornadoes are bad news. One happened in Harvest, Alabama, in March 2012. The town, which had just been hit by a tornado the previous April, found itself in the crosshairs of another powerful storm. Following a path identical to the one before it, the tornado destroyed many of the same homes that had been repaired or rebuilt since the last disaster. That’s nothing compared to the 23 tornadoes that have hit tiny Moore, Oklahoma, since the late 1800s, including five in a five-year span. The deadliest event was May 3, 1999, when that year’s tornado killed 36 and injured nearly 600. The creepiest twister repeats occurred in Codell, Kansas, in 1916, 1917 and 1918. Not only did they strike during three consecutive years, but they all happened on the same day: May 20.
- Engineering Disasters– Dam disasters are particularly dangerous because, unlike other structures, you don’t have to be on or near them to be hurt when they fail. One of the United States’ most infamous dam collapses happened May 31, 1889, just outside of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. When the waters receded, 2,209 people were dead. Despite the failure at Johnstown, few standards existed when dam builder extraordinaire William Mulholland built the St. Francis Dam in San Francisquito Canyon outside of Los Angeles in 1926. The first sign of trouble appeared on the morning of March 12, 1928, when water began pouring from one side of the concrete structure. By midnight it had collapsed, sending water and debris through town after downstream town. In recent years, airplanes have blown up and have been grounded.
- School Shootings – Mass killings are in the news a lot lately, and perhaps the most tragic are those that occur in schools. Whether it’s at a college like Virginia Tech, a high school like Columbine or an elementary school like Sandy Hook, the taking of young lives is an incredibly heartbreaking event. One of the more tragic school massacres occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. That’s where a 20-year-old man arrived at 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 14, 2012, with two handguns and an assault rifle in tow and killed 20 students and six adults before turning the gun on himself. In February 2018, a 19-year-old boy killed 17 students and wounded 14 more at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, a school from which he had been expelled. The deadliest school massacre occurred a century ago in Bath, Michigan. In 1927, school board member Andrew Kehoe spent several months wiring the Bath School with explosives before detonating them on May 18. The blasts killed 45 people, including 38 children.
- Mass Extinctions – When you talk about mass extinctions, you’re talking geological history. This is, without a doubt, the worst way history has repeated itself. Mass extinctions occur when more than 75 percent of all species on Earth die off in a short geological period — less than 2.8 million years. It’s happened five times over the past 500 million years, and some scientists think we’re in the early throes of the sixth:
- “Big Five” extinctions happened about 66 million years ago, when volcanic activity, climate change, and an asteroid impact wiped out 76 percent of all species, including the dinosaurs.
- The granddaddy of them all was the Permian mass extinction, also known as the Great Dying: A massive eruption in Siberia sparked a catastrophic chain reaction that killed an incredible 96 percent of all species
- Now some scientists claim the sixth mass extinction is already underway. That’s because species are going extinct at a much faster rate than normal — three to 12 times faster.
“I put the truth out there, I put the historical facts into Hip Hop to show us how much history repeats itself and that if we truly want to evolve as a human race, we need to stop sticking each other in ridiculous categories.” – Immortal Technique
History Repeats Itself FAQ
History repeats itself. That’s bad news for the 2020s – January 2, 2020 – David Baker – Lecturer in Big History, Macquarie University
What will happen in the 2020s? If history is any guide (and there’s good reason to think it is), the outlook isn’t great.
Here are some big-picture predictions:
- Stagnant real wages,
- Faltering standard of living for the lower and middle classes,
- Worsening wealth inequality,
- More riots and uprisings,
- Ongoing political polarization,
- More elites competing for limited positions of power, and
- Elites co-opting radical movements.
These aren’t just guesses. They are predictions made with the tools of Clio dynamics, which uses dozens of case studies of civilizations over the past 5,000 years to look for mathematical patterns in human history. Read more: Clio dynamics: can science decode the laws of history?
“It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.” – Mark Twain
Freaky Times When History Repeated Itself And No One Realized It – Chelsea Stone – December 26, 2019
Humanity is constantly reminding itself that everyone must learn from their mistakes. Yet, one look at our history proves that this reminder is often ignored or forgotten. Many times, when history has repeated itself it’s common knowledge, cited in history classes around the world. There have been many wars over land, murders for revenge, and assassinations of unprotected leaders. But there are many historical events we don’t even realize are repeats of the past.
So, when has history repeated itself beyond commonly discussed examples? What historical repeats are we missing from our history lessons? Read below to find out. Read More
- Tupac And Elvis’s Death Conspiracies Aren’t That Original
- Before There Was The Titanic, There Was The Tek Sing
- Political Candidates And Slander Have Always Been Synonymous
- There’s Been More Than One Holocaust – The Nazi Holocaust & The Armenian Holocaust
- There Were Two Economic Recessions Called ‘The Great Depression’
- The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Is An Eerie Reminder Of The Thirty Years’ War
- Hitler Was, In Many Ways, Napoleon 2.0
Thuillier: History is repeating itself — right before our eyes – Marcus Thuillier, Columnist – May 2, 2019
History tends to repeat itself. As memory fades, events from the past can become events of the present. Some, like author William Strauss and historian Neil Howe, argue that this is due to the cyclical nature of history — history repeats itself and flows based on the generations. According to them, four generations are needed to cycle through before similar events begin to occur, which would put the coming of age of the millennial generation in parallel to the events of the early 20th century. And if recent events are any indicators, American society is inching dangerously close to mirroring events of a century ago. Read More
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.” – Errol Morris
Propeller heads feat: Miss Shirley Bassey – History Repeating – Jun 27, 2011 – Wall of Sound Recording
History Repeating – Shirley Bassey (1998 Viva Diva TV Special) – May 31, 2011 – Shirley Bassey Music and Vids
10 Ways History Is Repeating Itself – Jun 25, 2020 – Alltime10s
We’ve all heard the phrase “history repeats itself”, but just how true is that? From mass extinctions to the pandemic crisis, to civil rights movements, these are 10 Ways History Is Repeating Itself…
Ancient Prophecies That Actually Came True – May 7, 2020 – The Infographics Show
Many prophets have claimed to be able to predict the future, but none are as famous as Nostradamus, who wrote numerous books about predicting the future. Some say he predicted the Coronavirus, and his track record shows that he has actually written about wars and major events that have come to pass. Should we be reading more of Nostradamus’ predictions to prepare for the future or are we reading too far into these ancient predictions, you decide after watching today’s amazing new video?
HOW YOUR FAMILY HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF – By Meagan McCrary
We’re all familiar with the old adage “history repeats itself.” And it’s true, broad patterns of war, genocide, social injustices, poverty, economic crashes, even pandemics have cycled through our world’s history on repeat.
However, how many of us have stopped to consider that familial history also repeats itself? That within family lineages, patterns of abuse, estrangement, betrayal, divorce, money issues, etc.—just to name a few—are passed down through the generations. And that said patterns unconsciously influences our thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, and relationships to this day.
While it may not always manifest as a direct replication, familial history has a sneaky, surprising, and sometimes puzzling way of repeating itself. Read More
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