It was George Santayana who said, âthose who cannot learn from history are condemned to repeat it.â
Allegedly.
Which has just made me remember this meme đ
Anyway, whoever said it, said it. Or something similar.
The point is, we all seem to know that history tends to repeat itself. My 9-year-old daughter knows it. My cats probably know it. I donât know how we know it, but we all know it. In the same way that we know you donât put the milk in tea first. Itâs some hard-wired shit. Â Â
History, then, is a cyclical thing.
Round and round it goes.
Except it doesnât really, does it?
Thinking on this notion, it seems to be A) reductive and B) problematic. Â
Itâs reductive because it doesnât quite reveal the full story. Itâs problematic because it creates a space between people and history. Digging into these issues is what today is all about.
What is Historical Consciousness?
The fancy-pants term for being mindful or aware of the connection between past, present and future is âhistorical consciousness.â Obviously, I believe that the higher your consciousness, the better. (And please know that I use âbetterâ in a non-judgemental way).
As a concept, historical consciousness serves (at least) two purposes:
It describes humanityâs ever-changing interest in the past.
It helps historians understand how people learn and engage with history, in any given time and place.
Historical consciousness relates to pretty much every type of âhistoryâ you can think of, from reading a history book or going to a museum, to reflecting on your personal history.
The point is, every time you brush up to something that relates to the past, youâre developing and fine-tuning your historical consciousness.
Clever, eh?
Why We Need to Raise the Consciousness Game
Obviously, Iâll argue to the death that history is the most important thing on earth. Iâm saying âthingâ because I donât know what to call it. Itâs not a subject, itâs not a concept, itâs not a discipline. Essentially, itâs my waking life, and so I find it hard to reduce it to a single word.
But history does explain everything in the world around us.
For example, it explains:
Why Child Q, a 15-year-old Black girl, was violently strip-searched without consent by white people at her school in London.
Why it took six years for the British government to pay the ÂŁ400m debt that freed Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
Among many, many, many other things.
So if we return to the reductive idea that history repeats itself, itâs clear that a rethink is needed.
A more appropriate way to think about it is that âŠ..
History doesnât repeat itself; people do.
Round and round they go.
Crucially, not having a high level of historical consciousness puts you at a disadvantage. You donât understand that Child Q was treated in that way because centuries of greed and racialised scientific theories made it justifiable for white people to commit crimes against Black people. At the same time, those centuries of greed and pseudoscience enabled the development of systemically racist institutions, along with a set of accompanying stereotypes that criminalise Black people. Similarly, the ancient system we call patriarchy justifies men to view and treat women in ways that emphasise manâs physical and moral dominance.
Of course, historical consciousness also applies to more mundane topics. It explains the clothes you wear and what youâll eat for dinner tonight. But I would argue that the most important contribution that historical consciousness could ever make is in the dismantling of systems that justify discrimination and violence against another. Without that knowledge, we can only ever go round and round.
As global citizens, upping your consciousness is arguably the most effective step you can take in staying informed and being a critical thinker, whatever the topic at hand. Doing that means getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. It means putting aside the one-sided, whitewashed narratives of history and intentionally seeking out the missing. Oh, and reading this newsletter, obvs đ
Until next time
Kaye x
Insightful, incisive and so interesting as always! Love the way you write.