Learn The Lessons From History—Or Else

Things that appear baffling at this time seem that way only because history is not consulted.

Armando Simon | April 10, 2026

History often appears to repeat itself. This is not due to some mysterious, unfathomable, force. Marxists have tended to personify what we call history as if it was some sort of mysterious deity which renders judgment, which only they comprehend because they are so intellectually superior to the rest of us. One hears this belief these days with the recurrence of Communists through the phrase of, “You’re on the wrong side of history!” directed at their opponents.

Rather, this seeming repetition of history is due to something much simpler. It is due to the fact that human beings remain essentially the same down through the centuries, with the same general personality characteristics and motivations being evident, though certain individuals occasionally exhibit unusual personality traits which makes them stand out. This becomes very evident when similar societal events (national or international) emerge, decade after decade, century after century.

And things that appear baffling at this time seem that way only because history is not consulted. Not having a knowledge of past historical events results in committing the same blunders again and again, or if you will, reacting the same way again and again, whether it is doing or not doing something. This has been remarked by notable persons: Otto von Bismarck observed, “What we learn from history is that no one learns from history.” Likewise, Friedrich Hegel stated, “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”

Let me give an example. It is in the nature of some persons to procrastinate in carrying out a painful task until the danger increases to the point of being overwhelming, even life-threatening, at which point there is a breakneck impulse to eliminate the threat, whereupon the effort may be futile. Thus, a person who is feeling unwell with recognizable symptoms may postpone going to the doctor, terrified, to get the anticipated diagnosis as long as possible. Persons with a cancer the size of a tomato in their body will finally seek a doctor’s help to remove it at the stage when the prognosis is bad, whereas if they had gone to the doctor when the cancer was the size of a pinpoint it would have been removed with as little effort as trimming a fingernail. These persons prefer to stick their heads in the sand while other individuals prefer to confront the imminent threat; it depends on the different personalities of different people.

On a broader scale, we saw it in the 1930s, when removing Hitler would have been much easier than it was the following decade; yes, starting a war in the 1930s would have been terrible, but not nearly as destructive and deadly as it became a few years later. We see it today, when many are bemoaning America’s bombardment of the theocratic regime in Iran, which is hellbent on acquiring a nuclear bomb as being unnecessary. If left unmolested and the fanatics achieve putting together atomic bombs and nuking its Sunni neighbors, Europe, or Israel, then those same naysayers would be screaming why was it not done earlier. Likewise, it appears at the present time that the earth is going through one of its periodic droughts which would result in famine. Yet, no one in North America has thought of building canals from the inexhaustible Great Lakes (as was done in Sumer and the Roman Republic) to the Midwest and elsewhere, or desalination plants in other countries.

Another example. If one reads Plutarch, in ancient Greece and Rome we encounter on the one hand, arrogance, lawbreaking, and corruption in the ruling class. On the other hand, we see envy, coveting, and resentment on the part of the subjects. We see the same pattern today.

Another example. Western Europe and North America are presently in the throes of a totalitarian movement whose goal is to destroy civilization, not to supplant it with something better, but just to destroy it, and the movement needs to be forcefully stamped out. It would surprise Americans, Canadians, and Brits to know that Russia went through the very same phase prior to the Communist takeover, the culprits being “nihilists” who, among other things, proclaimed that a pair of boots was more important than a painting by Raphael. In America, we have seen the overturning of statues, the “decolonizing” of art, history, film, and literature, as well as the condemnation of everything in society, from mathematics to traffic lights, as being” racist.”     

In the UK, Canada, and the USA, there is censorship by these same liberals/nihilists of saying anything derogatory, either in humor or in earnest, about homosexuals, transgenders, feminists, black criminals or Muslim savages, with the following command that we must be tolerant, that being intolerant is evil. This dogma would have sounded familiar to Dostoyevsky, who remarked, “Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.”

Let me use another, apolitical, example. The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, studied numerous cultures, both past and present. He found that there were a number of very simple, yet very potent, inherent concepts buried in the unconscious of human beings (the collective unconscious), which he named “archetypes.” These archetypes tend to manifest themselves in the same manner though differing in minor details, but to which people react to in a predictable manner. Along the same lines, Camille Paglia has done an exhaustive study of popular culture; she connects trivial items of popular culture as being an extension of previous “high” culture, the latter as precursors of present-day popular events, though I admit there are times the connection seems tenuous. The point here is that, if a person is not self-aware, he will react in a predictable manner (which brings up the question of free will, but that’s a whole different debate).

In short, similar circumstances decades or centuries apart tend to evoke similar behavior both in highly placed persons and regular citizens because of human nature (i.e., personality), and, because, they think the events are unique. This cycle can be disrupted if those persons are aware of the fact, and, of the past. Or, to use George Santayana’s famous Cassandra phrase, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Armando Simón is a retired psychologist and historian, author of Very Peculiar Stories and The Transgender Cult: Psychology, Politics, Religion and the Media.

Image generated by ChatGPT.

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