In 1948, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill stood before the British House of Commons and paraphrased Spanish philosopher George Santayana, saying, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
History is a fickle thing. It’s constantly being reevaluated, recontextualized and even rewritten but at its core, it is the record of what has happened in the past. It serves as a guide to past triumphs and failures in the hopes that a future generation would learn from them. It can be a useful tool with insightful retrospection, especially if you have been mired by 30 years of failure.