Not repeating an unfortunate past means going beyond how we normally remember the past.

We repeat our mistakes if we don’t remember our experiencing self when we made these errors.

Endings cast their image over an entire event and can obscure provocative beginnings and troublesome middles.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"—a message first conveyed by philosopher George Santayana and then restated over the years by teachers, historians, political figures, and world leaders.1 The lesson is clear: not remembering an unfortunate past allows us to repeat it.

What's not as clear, but just as prescient, is that remembering an unfortunate past may not prevent us from repeating it. In fact, we need to go beyond normal remembering to avoid repeating our mistakes. This goes for personal experiences as well as historical events.

How does normal remembering open us up to repeating mistakes of the past?

The Experiencing Self and the Remembering Self

Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman distinguishes between the experiencing self and the remembering self. The experiencing self feels events in the present, whereas the remembering self looks back and feels the memory of these events. Notably, we experience events consistently and fully throughout, but we often remember events in terms of how they ended. And when an extended event is over, it is our remembering self that tells us what happened. So the ending of an event strongly shapes the memory of the entire event.

Why Endings Are So Influential

Endings disproportionately influence our memory because they often bestow meaning on an entire event. Suppose we undergo a series of medical examinations and tests for a suspicious growth. On our final visit to the doctor, we receive a diagnosis of a benign cyst. This favorable diagnosis then gives meaning to the entire experience, defining it as the normal process of checking on our health. The remembering self may even recall the favorable ending as inevitable, despite never experiencing this inevitability during the actual examinations.

In this example, it seems sensible and healthy to focus on the fortunate ending, diminishing the uncertainty and anxiety of the earlier examinations and emphasizing our good health. Nonetheless, the memory is a skewed representation of what was actually experienced and could lead to misjudgment in the future.

Similarly, most political elections........

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