Learning from the Past

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (George Santayana, 1905). This quote was given to us as a journal prompt and we had to interpret what Santayana meant. What I interpreted through this quote was that we should remember our past mistakes that we have made and make sure we do not do it again so that we can have a bright and better future. An example of this would be the act of slavery that occurred as far back as Jamestown, Virginia where the first settlers came. The tension between whether slavery should be allowed or should be outlawed grew and grew until the only option left was to go to war. This led to the bloodiest war of United States history. Thus, slavery was abolished and was never seen in America again because people did not want to repeat the tragic event. At first, I thought that everybody would learn from their mistakes from the past, but I was proven wrong. When reading a packet about war, many of the rules have been repeated from the Civil War, World War II, and even modern wars. One of the rules of war is to ever target civilians unless a military target is within a city, then it is considered justifiable. Throughout history, many innocent people have died because of military personnel killing them for no apparent reason. No one has learned from the past mistakes, such as the Atomic Bombings of Japan or Sherman's March to the Sea. My point is that you will learn from the past and correct them in the future, just not all mistakes will be able fixed.