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Santayana (and you thought all he did was play guitar ;-) said, "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Hmm. But then Jim Shaw pointed out that "those who know history are condemned to think it is repeating itself." Oh dear. And then, Henry Ford weighed in with his view that "history is more or less bunk." Give me an intelligible translation of that and you pass the course. Schmookler, who became a historian because what else can you do with a name like that, said "history is a nightmare from which we are trying to awaken." Yikes. I think the best reasons for understanding something of our history are the reasons for which the amnesia victim struggles to re-learn his past: that without it, something fundamental about what we are as human beings is lost.
on the buffalo grass. --- traditional Sioux proverb |
