by Mary Wakefield Buxton –
URBANNA — Not studying history is scary. What concerns me is few people study history anymore as it leads to few job opportunities and therefore many people are not properly scared.
We should be scared. Not knowing the story of man in his relatively short life span on earth, (“modern man” is thought to have lived on Earth about 200,000 years) is extremely dangerous. It was probably a history major that warned if we don’t know our recorded history (records go back about 4,000 years) we are destined to repeat it. And repeating history is exactly what has happened in the past, again and again.
I recommend a short, concise roundup of history by Pulitzer Prize winning historians, Will and Ariel Durant titled, “The Lessons of History.”
These authors start at the beginning of recorded history in all areas of the world, and work down through the centuries headlining universal causes and outcomes of conflict.
A few themes stand out. We have all descended from ancestors that suffered the same “stuff” no matter where we originated from or what our race, religion or ethnic background is. And guess what? We not only all suffered the same stuff, but we also suffered it all over again and again and … we are all still suffering from the same stuff today.
My high school history teacher used to say, “There is nothing new under the sun.” It’s all happened before and will continue to happen into time immemorial. Unless the species we know as Homo Sapiens, supposedly the most intelligent critter that has ever walked the earth, ever wises up. Learning history is the first step.
Here is a taste of history:
- • The Aztecs were tearing the hearts out of chests of those defeated in war with obsidian stone and offering sometimes the still beating heart to their Gods, long before the Spanish arrived infecting them with European germs which killed them off even before their swords.
- • The Romans, after the third Punic War waged against the Carthaginians, killed every man, woman and child, plowed under their homes and salted the earth so that no living thing would ever grow there again.
- • The Vikings ransacked Scotland, England, Europe into the Mediterranean Sea killing, raping and burning villages everywhere they stopped.
- • The Normans conquered Anglo Saxons, took all their property and enslaved them.
- • The African tribal chieftains sold defeated neighboring tribes into slavery destined for labor in the “New World.”
- • The Europeans took as much land in the New World from the natives as possible, killing off much of the native population and then using slave labor to build wealth.
- • The Germans gassed their adversaries in World War I and murdered 6 million Jews in World War II.
- • The Russians shot 15,000 Polish officers in cold blood throwing their corpses in one mass ditch after killing millions of their own people during their earlier communist revolution.
- • Americans hoping to speed the end of the war atomic bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima killing 100,000 civilians at each site.
- • Mao was responsible for deaths of millions of his people enforcing communism on China.
And the preceding is just a taste. Everyone’s ancestors suffered misery, injustice, starvation, enslavement, torture, rape, looting, destruction of homes, genocide, starvation, murder and ongoing horror. Sadly, millions today are still experiencing any or all the above.
What Durant points out is the law of the jungle, “kill or be killed,” has been the modus operandi for humankind since our beginning. If you are seen as weak, you attract predators, and you will be destroyed. History tells us every few decades there appears a tyrant that craves more territory and power and will attack, kill and enslave the weak.
One more thing. Appeasement does not work.
Other interesting themes. Religions tended to teach their God or Gods were the true Gods and all other Gods were false. Many wars have been triggered by the zeal to convert or destroy the “infidel.”
Then the ongoing conflict between “Have and Have Nots” constantly caused revolution which triggered death for millions. The irony is the “Have Nots” became as evil, if not worse, than those they destroyed.
Great powers appear and decline. All go bankrupt. Either the Haves demanded too much of the wealth or the Have Nots demanded too much of the spoils known today as benefits. Both kinds of greed led to bankruptcy.
If we could learn tolerance of those who are different from us, follow the advice of the peacemakers to love your neighbor and control natural impulses of aggression, and find a way to control the occasional tyrant, would that improve human history?
I stay scared. Today’s parallel of the World War II axis of Germany, Italy and Japan to today’s Russia’s move into Ukraine, China’s eyeing Taiwan and Iran’s continued aggression toward Israel is worrisome. Are we doomed to repeat another great war to save American hopes for individual freedom and opportunity for all humankind?
© 2022
