A friend asked me the other day how the new book was coming along which, as usual, sent me off on another tangent of thought. You see, the new novel is a work of historical fiction, which requires a great deal of research. That’s no big deal for me because I’ve always enjoyed reading about history. The usual response when I say that is, “Ugh. All those names and dates. How boring!”
Well, if all you look at are names and dates, then yeah, that’s weapons-grade boring. But that’s not what history is, not really. History is the story of people and their interactions with each other. For human beings, nothing is quite so fascinating to us as we are ourselves. Properly applied, history shows us what we have done before so as to give us insight into what we might do again. But how can that be? People in the past were so different than us.
Really?
Archeologists marvel that the ancient Egyptians were able to build enormous monuments such as the pyramids without the benefit of modern technology. Why? Why do we assume that just because someone lived many years ago that they were somehow stupid or, at best, ignorant of how the world works? Where do we think we got all our fancy technology? It was built on foundations established long ago. The same is true of our attitudes about life, ourselves, and others.
You know the old saying, those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it? Contrary to what we might tend to think now, human beings in the past were generally the same as us in terms of needs, desires, prejudices, and general outlook on life. That is precisely why the saying is true. That is also why the study of history is so relevant to us in our lives today.
In my book, the action takes place in central Europe between the years 1925-1945. It doesn’t take much research to see that the crisis in Europe today differs very little from what happened in the 19th and 20th centuries. History is repeating itself before our eyes, and we would do well to pay attention.
Douglas Adams, in his book Mostly Harmless, which chronicles the continuing saga of his intrepid galactic hitchhikers Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect, writes about Arthur and Ford doing quite a bit of time traveling. In speaking of the future, Ford Prefect relates that he’s been all over the future and that it’s exactly the same as now, “only with faster cars and smellier air.”
Well dear reader, our age is certainly faster and smellier, but it sure ain’t different, because we aren’t different; not in the core of our beings. On the micro level, we would be wise to look at our individual pasts to learn what we should, and shouldn’t do, in the future. Just imagine what the world would be like if we never repeated past mistakes.
