Thinking of the adage that “those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it,” it is easy to fear that current national and global events are willfully negligent of obvious parallels to the past. Why is that? Whose fault is it? Societal train wrecks like the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan have occurred too frequently throughout history, yet lessons learned, or not learned, do not help us prevent a repeat of such calamities.
A two-session facilitated discussion will focus on potential disastrous outcomes of present US attitudes toward “political enemies” to ascertain the group’s consensus on how strong history’s influence on current events is and should be, based on anecdotal evidence. On the assumption that we determine that history’s lessons are too often ignored, or even blocked, what steps can we agree on that would make history’s lessons more influential?
