Give and Take of “History Repeats Itself”

The Human Predisposition to self-inflict the Recurrent Communal Guiding principles thru the Notion of the Collective Conscience

History is the story of living people and their immediate environment. That is what every soul leaves behind once farewells our limited realm. That is what it implies in the literal sense and what should be!

Realistically, history should happen once in eternity, yet many have argued for the contrary. The same people fail to know that the human being is the creature of radicalism and selfishness even within their collective conscious sphere. As humans, we are bound by ordains that often overlook our individual identity for the sake of cooperative behaviors; we fall into the Groupthink trap and ultimately entertain “Group Polarization.” By entangling ourselves with our peers and forerunners’ norms dictated, we repeat the same actions whether such action is deemed a mistake or integrity.

In the modern sense, some believe history tends to reiterate, as memory withers, past experiences become events of today. The latter theory is not a novel one as it can be traced back to Indian philosophy and ancient Egypt and Judaic wisdom literature. It was later taken up by the Pythagoreans and Stoics it compared life to a “festival.” With the waning of antiquity and the spread of Christianity, the concept mostly fell into disuse in the Western world before it was once again reincarnated by 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche linked his thought to many other ideas of his, including Amor fati, or “love of fate. “That was around the era when Mark Twain said once:

“A favorite theory of mine [is] that no occurrence is sole and solitary, but is merely a repetition of a thing which has happened before, and perhaps often.”

But, Does History indeed Repeat itself? — OR we repeat the same mistakes by giving away our Individual Values to the comfort of Collectivity?

Like writer William Strauss and historian Neil Howe, some argue that this is due to history’s cyclical nature. They believe four generations are needed to cycle through before similar events transpire again, which would put the millennial generation is analogous to the early 20th-century events. And if recent events, such as racism, discrimination, populism, and radical standoff, are any pointers, American society is crawling dangerously close to mirroring events of a century ago. Repeating the same events of the rise of social unions as to when Carl Marx Stated:

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”

A repeat of history is nothing short of the reality of standoff against individual autonomy under the collective conscience rhetoric. Once we fall into the joint lure and the group polarization, then we devote ourselves to the battle of factions.

The struggle of factions is the “Ping pong phenomenon”; it would seem like history is repeating itself. For instance, during the communist iron wall era, socialism gave into the globalist movement’s subterfuge, which re-introduced its predecessors’ feudalism only this time at the global scale with the hands of corporate masters. Now that we are amid globalism, left-wing populism is on the rise using the same narratives once considered taboo to politicians. On the other extreme, the right-wing populists embrace fascism yet with a touch of national sovereignty.

By legitimizing the collective presence, human beings disconnect from the reality of what truly transpires around them. All a joint see is the commonality of its notions but not the essence of the belief they are against. Utilizing group polarization, an individual reckons, if it is accepted to the group and differentiated from the other factions, then it must be the perfect alternative. This history doesn’t reiterate; on the contrary, it is us who make the same mistake. And Those of us who do not survey the history primarily because they trust the mainstream rhetoric are doomed to repeat it.

“Individual autonomy does not repeat in history.”

In societies that have declined to defy past disservice, the most widespread rationales for inclusion failed to appeal to a different kind of value, i.e., that of personal and political autonomy.

“Carl Marx said once, History repeats itself! Sure, his fantasies are turning into reality amid a political standoff against individual autonomy under the collective conscience magniloquence”