The Importance of History
I think it’s safe to say that every single history teacher in the history of mankind has said the phrase, “History repeats itself” at least 5 times to their students. When I was in high school, I didn't think much of it, it was such a cliche that it really wasn’t worth my attention. I’m so glad I realized how wrong I was at such a young age.
I first began to realize the importance of history when I started to become interested in finance, trading in particular. The safest, and most profitable way to trade assets is by using a trading system. That’s just a fancy word for a rigid set of rules that one must stick to no matter what; kind of like gambling rules, but this will actually make you some money. Now, before implementing a system, a trader must first verify that their system will be profitable, otherwise, what’s the point? They do this through a process called backtesting. To backtest a system, one simply gets their system and applies it to their asset of choice and based on the patterns and trends experienced in the past, they can make an accurate assessment of whether or not the system will be profitable. My entire livelihood revolves around the assumption that history repeats itself. Trends that we see now, whether in financial markets or even society, have definitely happened in the past, and it’s an excellent idea to learn from them.
This goes for oneself too. I realized this rather recently when I started reading The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. For every law in the book, there is a historical example of someone breaking the law, and someone following it; it’s truly astonishing. There is so much to be learned, and so much struggle that can be avoided, just by studying the actions of our ancestors.
Experience really is the best teacher so it really makes me wonder why we don’t focus on learning from the experiences of others. Looking back on it, it’s also very sad that they never taught us the practical applications of history in school. I would have been so much better off learning about the mistakes that Napoleon made as a leader, or why Churchill’s leadership during WWII was so powerful, than learning about the history of the US for the 3rd year in a row. We could have learned about the life lessons taught by Ancient Greek philosophers instead of learning about the fall of Ancient Greece. The practical applications of history are limitless, so it really makes me wonder why we weren’t taught this in school.
Could it be a way to “keep us in our place?” The same way that schools teach very little about financial literacy, or the way that oppressive governments keep their citizens from reading the works of Paulo Freire, are they keeping this knowledge from us purposely? Just imagine how much more educated the average person would be just from knowing their history.
We would be so much more aware of the world around us, life would be so much more interesting. The possibilities are endless, and the human race would be infinitely more powerful.
