“For much of the greater part of the human past…it is assumed that it could tell us how society, any society should work. The past was the model for the present and the future,” writes Professor Eric Hobsbawm,¹ perhaps one of the greatest historians of the 20th century. “(I)f the present was in some sense unsatisfactory, the past provided the model for reconstructing it in a satisfactory form.”² It is the “authority for the present.”³

These statements duly sum up one of the most commonly heard sentiments of heralding to the “good old days”. Many pine for the simplicity of the past, an age where we are not overwhelmed by the lightning of changes in the name of development; where we are not overwhelmed by the information overload; where communication is neither email, sms nor internet chat, but a letter in the mail or a voice transmitted by cable from phone to phone. We pine for the days where artistes and writers are regarded and respected as the conscience of society.

But the past is not really perfect, is it? The world could do without the barbarity that characterised the world before “civilisations” (and even in supposedly “civilised times” as well). We could do without the guillotine, institutionalised slavery and discrimination; we could do without the oppressiveness of living under despotic conditions.

Professor Hobsbawm’s sentiments are also, perhaps, illuminating of one of the most commonly cited purposes of studying history: to learn from the lessons of the past so as to create a better future.

But can we ever? Do we ever?

The 20^th and 21^st centuries are still characterised by unbridled violence and barbarity, fuelled by technology. Slavery, discrimination, despotic conditions continue to thrive, albeit in different forms and with different names.

This is one of the biggest contradictions – despite the exhortations to learn from the mistakes of the past, societies never do. Conflicts break out again and again, in spite of the international community’s frequent pledges of “never again” to subject the world to the scourge of wars. In spite of their harrowing Holocaust experience, the Israeli Jews are doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis (and other tormentors throughout history) did to them. In spite of the failures of its attempt to cultivate friendly alliances and allies in despots and dictators in Latin America, Southeast Asia, East Asia and Africa, the US continues to do so. Washington seems immune to the spectacularly devastating effects such acts have on its foreign policy, and more importantly, on the innocent civilians of the countries it meddles in. Despite the failure of economic sanctions on undesirable regimes, world powers turn to that tool which succeeds only in inflicting suffering on the population time and again, blind to the futility of the act.

If history is indeed the authority for the present, it certainly seems not to be the case in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. If history is to be the model on which to satisfactorily reconstruct the present’s imperfections, the world we live in today does not testify to that.

To attribute this state of affair to plain ignorance is an easy way out. I agree with Professor Hobsbawm: “it takes two to learn the lessons of history and anything else: one to give the information, the other to listen”.⁴

Why then study history? Is there any use? Professor Hobsbawm is at once pessimistic and optimistic. Most regimes make their young to study history in some form is “not to understand their society and how it changes, but to approve of it, to be proud of it, to be or become good citizens”.⁵

While history has an inherent tendency to become a self-justifying myth in many situations, we must still strive to learn and teach the lessons of history.

“It is the business of historians to try and remove these blindfolds, or at least to lift them slightly or occasionally – and insofar as they do, they can tell contemporary society some things it might benefit from, even if it is reluctant to learn them.”⁶

Indeed, we must always try if we are not to evolve into a society so arrogant in its knowledge of its ability to manipulate the world to its liking.

<sub>1. Eric Hobsbawm, On History, 3rd edition, London: Abacus, 2005, p 33.
2. Ibid., p 34.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p 36.
5. Ibid., p 47.
6. Ibid.</sub>

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