Those who don’t remember Santayana’s remark about the past need not be concerned, because someone is bound to repeat it. From that well-known saying, we draw the inference that those who do remember the past are not condemned to repeat it. In so doing, of course, we commit the fallacy of denying the antecedent, but I wouldn’t let that worry you. It is what Santayana wished to convey, and it is precisely the inference that most of us make anyway. We figure if more people studied history, they would not keep making the same mistakes over and over again. The real question is not whether the inference is valid, but whether the conclusion is true.
I once had a girlfriend who apparently did not think so. “Why bother studying history?” she said one night. “You’re just going to have to live through it again anyway.” That is not a nice thing to say to someone who is only halfway through the first volume of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. From then on, I made sure I put the book back on the shelf before she came over to my apartment.
I bring up the subject of Santayana, because someone else brought it up. I think his idea was that if those who want to wage war on Syria read all the articles to which he provided links, they would realize that going to war with Syria would be a repeat of the mistake we made in going to war with Iraq. But would they? I don’t think so.
In the world of investing, it is well-known that people repeat the same mistakes over and over again. They buy high and sell low. And that is because they are driven by greed and fear. Against these strong passions, mere knowledge of the behavior of markets past is no match, and in any event is easily dismissed by pointing out that “it’s different this time.” There are some people who manage to invest wisely (and I am sure the reader is one of those happy exceptions); and there are some people who see the folly of war. But most people want to go to war, and they are not about to let their knowledge of history stand in the way. They are not worried about any superficial similarities to Iraq. It’s different this time.
You can no more talk people out of war by getting them to study history than you can talk a young man and woman out of getting married by bringing to their attention the statistics on divorce. Miserable marriages may be all around them, but they know their love is different. Even when they are proven wrong, and their love has brought them to grief, they are not immune to making the mistake again. They will say they married the wrong person, and this time it will be different. By the same token, when war does not work out, people figure we just fought it the wrong way, and we merely have to be more careful next time.
We continue to go to war because we have the power to do so, and no amount of knowledge about the past will make any difference. Only when our empire collapses, when we have become weak and have retreated within our borders, hoping to be left alone, will our desire for war come to an end. And we will be amazed to discover just how well we get along without it. That much we do learn from history.