Failure to profit from patterns of history

Historical research has failed to illuminate the patterns of history so that everyone may utilize the significant lessons of the past. People thus see no meaning in the past and are ignorant of their heritage. This isolates them in the present without an historical or a future context. The past needs to be viewed in such a way that people can understand who they are now and how best to move into the future.

1. Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward (Kierkegaard).

2. Hindsight is an exact science.

1. In any given set of circumstances, the proper course of action is determined by subsequent events.

1. Historical naivety

1. Recurrence of misapprehended world problems
2. Paralysis of elders faced with the future
3. Limit to collective comprehension span in societal learning
4. Insufficient common experience
5. Human wisdom considered unrelated to daily life
6. Commemoration of dishonourable historical events

1. Unrecorded knowledge
2. Unmeaningful social roles for the aged
3. Unethical practice in historical disciplines
4. Underutilization of popular wisdom
5. Limited social guidance by older generations
6. Limited historical method
7. Lack of wisdom system
8. Lack of historical record
9. Historical misrepresentation
10. Global amnesia
11. Disrespect for elders
12. Dismissal of past cultural achievements
13. Denial by old people of the significance of the past
14. Biased recall
15. Anachronism

1. Constraint of inherited problems on policy innovation

1. End of history

1. Remembering lessons of history
2. Profiting from patterns of history
3. Living by past experience
4. Denying lessons of history

1. Wisdom
2. Self-denial
3. Profiteering
4. Irrelevance
5. Inexperience
6. Inappropriateness
7. Failure
8. Experience
9. Denial