Learning from history

It's said that “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” It might also be said that those who are unable to learn from history -- or who don't even know their history -- cannot honestly expect to have their ill-formed and baseless opinions taken seriously. History has many lessons for those both alert enough to identify them and honest enough not to evade them:

• From the Dark Ages comes the lesson that taken together faith, mysticism, an ethic of blind sacrifice and a focus on some non-existent other world leads to dirt-poor misery in this one. (The same lesson can be learned either from the thousand years of the Western Dark Ages, or from what looks to be at least a thousand years of Islamic Dark Ages.)
• The Inquisition and Islamic jihad between them show the truth of Voltaire's dictum that those who believe absurdities tend to commit atrocities.
• From the Enlightenment comes the lesson that between them reason and a focus on this world provide a way out of the darkness.
• The Industrial Revolution shows that reason applied to production leads to an enormous increase in human welfare, (and from it also comes the further lesson that reason is man's unique means of survival).
• That the Industrial Revolution happened first and most spectacularly in Britain shows that a legal environment protecting freedom and property rights is necessary for such a revolution to happen and to endure.
• The relative success of the US Constitution shows that if you know what you're about that it's possible to tie up the government to protect freedom and property rights at least some of the time.
  
• From two World Wars and a century of slaughter comes the lesson that totalitarian state worship is not the route to human happiness.
• From the bloody failures of collectivism comes the lesson that 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need' is a recipe for human sacrifice and bloody slaughter.
• From the rise of Nazism comes the lesson that appeasement rewards the aggressor; that all evil requires is for good men to do nothing.
• From the Holocaust comes the lesson of the banality of evil, and the evil of blindly following orders.
• From the spectular post-war economic successes of Germany and Japan comes the lesson that trade and capitalism are better than totalitarianism and bloody conquest.
• From the rise of the Asian Tiger economies comes the lesson (again) that freedom and prosperity are directly and inextricably linked.
• From the Fall of the Berlin Wall comes the lesson that non-freedom and poverty are also and inextricably linked.
• The continuing fatwah on Salman Rushdie; the murders of Theo van Gogh, Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg and Paul Marshall Johnson; the deaths of September 11 and the bombings of Bali, Madrid and London -- between them the lesson is there that war has been declared between barbarity and civilisation.

All these lessons are there for those who choose to open their eyes and learn them. Taken together, the lesson from the events of history is that reason, individualism and capitalism are a recipe for health, wealth and happiness in this world, and their polar opposites a prescription only for death, misery and destruction.

UPDATE: Speaking of history, Stephen Hicks has just spent two hours he didn't have exploring this great timeline history of the universe (right). Ignore his warning at your peril.

LINK: Timeline history of the universe - JohnKyrk.Com

TAGS: History, Philosophy, Ethics, Politics, Objectivism