{"id":36735,"date":"2016-12-22T01:00:27","date_gmt":"2016-12-22T06:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36735"},"modified":"2016-12-21T13:43:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-21T18:43:00","slug":"qotd-history-provides-lessons-for-the-present-not-spoilers-for-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/12\/22\/qotd-history-provides-lessons-for-the-present-not-spoilers-for-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;History provides lessons for the present, not spoilers for the future&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The other issue with historical analogy is that it ignores, well, history. Before World War I, an alliance system had never resulted in such catastrophic outcomes. The very fact of the war \u2014 the knowledge every actor in the drama now carries \u2014 changes the calculation every player makes. In 1914, no one knew something like the Great War, with its destructive, devastating results, could happen. Now, everyone does.<\/p>\n<p>We are in a season rife with historical analogy, with many Americans glancing fretfully toward Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, drawing on the experience of those decades to illuminate this one. But historical analogies can often obscure rather than enlighten, assert rather than explain. Easy historical analogies lead us to think we understand more about the world and the future than we do.<\/p>\n<p>The truth is, we don\u2019t know what will happen next, nor the best way to respond. History provides lessons for the present, not spoilers for the future. As such, it should inform our understanding, not dictate it. Those who fail to learn from the past may be doomed to repeat it, but those who over-learn are doomed, as well.<\/p>\n<p>Nicole Hemmer, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/posteverything\/wp\/2016\/12\/20\/this-isnt-1914-and-historical-analogies-can-often-lead-us-astray\/?utm_term=.d987466bc1ee\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The Ankara shooting isn\u2019t 1914. And historical analogies can often lead us astray&#8221;, <em>Washington Post<\/em><\/a>, 2016-12-20.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The other issue with historical analogy is that it ignores, well, history. Before World War I, an alliance system had never resulted in such catastrophic outcomes. The very fact of the war \u2014 the knowledge every actor in the drama now carries \u2014 changes the calculation every player makes. In 1914, no one knew something [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,7,41,246,230],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-history","category-quotations","category-ww1","category-ww2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9yv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36736,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36735\/revisions\/36736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}