Harry Stout and George Santayana

So today in class we read the introduction to "Upon the Altar of the Nation" by Harry Stout. These couple pages discussed the premise of a book which questioned and discussed the way in which history, tragic history in particular, is viewed by historians and students. He stated that historians and students subconsciously judge the morality of the piece of history they are dissecting and that this judgement, while subconscious and in most circumstances justified, did nothing to further the analysis of the piece of history. I definitely agree with this statement because people tend to judge events too much rather than analyze the value and impact that the piece of history has on modern life or life in the time the event took place. You can make moral judgments, but don't let the moral judgments get in the way of a detailed and unbiased analysis.

The journal discussion we did today was centered around the quote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -George Santayana, 1905. We were asked to reflect on this saying and what it meant to us. Most people responded saying that they agree with this statement and that studying history and learning its implications from daily life helps better our society and prevent us from making mistakes. I agree with these statements, mostly. I do think that humanity has learned from a number of mistakes that they made throughout history, but I do not think that simply learning about an issue that happened and ensued negative consequences prevents humanity from making this mistake again. For example, discrimination, hatred, and war have been a constant threat throughout the world as long as anyone can remember and learning about incidents like the civil rights movement hasn't prevented discrimination from existing today. This is because some mistakes are simply human nature, and even education and reflection cannot prevent people from being people.