History, Rhyming And Repeating

"HISTORY REPEARS ITSELF" is a phrase often used by intelligent people untrained in the social science of history. It is always well intentioned, intended to speak truth and elucidate reality. The word "trope" might describe the phrase, because presumably it is used, at least to a certain extent, figuratively, metaphorically. We can be assured that nobody who is mentally healthy actually beleves that the world is a perpetual "Ground Hog Day", consisting of a single day, repeated infinitely. Nor most probably do people mean to imply that we are born again and aging into the same world, reliving our lives with precision. What they really mean, perhaps, is that patterns of human behavior can be gleaned from historical events and trends. Wars follow periods of economic depression and instability. Technologically primitive civilizations are conquered and supplanted by those with more advanced technology and weapons. Religions begin as small cults, and, those which fulfill emotional needs increase in popularity, a critical mass is reached, and they proliferate in votaries to include millions of people, taking their place on the global stage, becoming one of the world's great faiths. Nations start small, grow in territory and population, overextend their resoureces in their expansion by attempting to govern and provede the needs of too great a geographical area, and then begin a slow decline which leads ultimately to their downfall. I remember an econoimcs professor, himself a serious student of history, telling me that the United States in the early twenty first century reminded him of the late Roman Empire in the third century A.D. I agreed with him completely then, and still do. The vast expansion of empire geopraphically, the projection of military and economic power far beyond the nation's borders, huge expenditures of resources in military procurement, a crass culture addicted to vacuous entertainment and vicarious violence, rampant, extreme economic and social inequality, social fragmentation and atomization, religious cults emerging locally in almost every corner of the country, dividing people, sapping the patriotic enthusiasm of the population, enticing people away from the dreary reality of everyday life, and luring them into spiritual realms of their own invention, further fragmenting energies, loyalties, and endeavors. Indisputably, drawing comparisons between the late Roman Empire in decline and contemporary America has validity. We can only hope that this analogy is false, that our beloved America is indeed not in decline, and that we, with sustained, dlilgent, collective effort, can sustain our national health and vigor..indefinitely. We have it within our power to do exactly that, we must trust. But one must be careful in making the coparisons, lest one overextend one's intellectual empire of the mind, and arrive on distant shores, stranded amid a murky sea of untenable praadigms. In essense, such comparisons have strict limits of efficacy. Above all, such comparisons do not fall within the realm of history, but more properly, sociology. History is the study of the past. The past concists of a seemingly (but not actually) infinite number of unique events. The united States is not "repeating" ancient Roman history, simply, precisely because nobody alive today was alive then; and nobody alive then is alive today. Its that simple. Whatever I do today wil never happen again, Somebody else may well do the same thing, but, different person, different location,different day. History is an enormous succession of documented, and interpretation of those events, large and small, involving millions of unique people, times, and places. Or,as a prominent historian once eloquently articulated: "One damned thing after another"... Wasn't it Mark Twain who said that history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes? Try telling a well trained professional historian that "history repeats itself", and you're likely to get a negative response, a dismissive shrug, a clarification, or a voluminous tome hurled in your direction. If you're lucky, the clarification will suffice, and germinate understanding. One can only hope, because you will never have the same opportunity to say the same thing to the same historian and receive the same precise response in the same precise way, ever again.