We are often told that “history” will judge us and our actions. But how long do we have to wait? Days? Months? Years? Centuries?

Actually, we write our own history every day and we should be our own judge to start. Let’s see if our decisions and actions might stand up to the tests of time.

But first, consider this definition from Historians’ Fallacies: “A historian is someone (anyone) who asks an open-ended question about past events and answers it with selected facts which are arranged in the form of an explanatory paradigm.” [i]

What’s your “explanatory paradigm” about your points of view for the following:

The market is wonderful! …  No, we are going into a recession!

Send more equipment to Ukraine. …  No, let them fight their own war.

Climate change is all man’s fault! …  No, it’s not!

Nationalism is good! … No, we need globalism!

The Left is right! … No, the Right is right!

Some points of view

Will your position, your “history,” stand the test of time? Consider the following as food for thought. I hope you don’t get indigestion.

• “..being typical men in power, (they) chose to believe what they wanted to believe, accepting whatever justified their policies and convictions and ignoring the rest.” [ii]  Fischer was writing about medieval men in power, but we see the same situation 500 years later.  What is your conviction about Israel and Hamas?  What are you ignoring that just might change your view? Don’t be willfully ignorant of other points of view.  
• “No one wants to learn by mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from successes to go beyond the state of the art.” [iii]  Petroski was writing about engineering failures, but his observations apply equally to any complex system. What mistakes have you (and others) made that should be used for learning, not swept under the rug? What did you learn from the mistakes that were made in fighting the Covid19 pandemic? (Look for data, not opinions.)
• According to Cohen and Gooch, here are three kinds of failure in war: failure to learn obvious lessons, failure to anticipate predictable situations, and failure to adapt to new and unexpected circumstances. Each type of failure is bad enough but “When all three kinds of failure occur together, catastrophe results.” [iv] We are on the verge of a climate catastrophe. What do we know about the past and present and what should we anticipate? Devote time to learn from the past, deal with today and prepare for the future.

Fischer, the author of the opening quote goes on to say that “A fallacy is not merely an error itself but a way of falling into error. It consists in false reasoning, often from true factual premises, so that false conclusions are generated.”

We are all historians, and we must make efforts to avoid “falling into error.” History will judge us. Or, as Cicero stated over two thousand years ago, “Not to know what happened before one was born is always to be a child.”

Bill

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[i] Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought, David H Fischer, 1970

[ii] A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance, William Manchester, 1992

[iii] To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design, Henry Petroski, 1982

[iv] Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War, Cohen and Gooch, 1990