your history and mine

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Last night, I got sucked into yet another documentary about World War II. The film bounced back and forth between combat (largely in the Pacific) to the American home front. And one man, now white-haired and seemingly out of tears, told the tale of being in his fox hole one night when a single shot rang out.

A single shot and then everything was quiet except for the Marine who had been hit. All night long, the wounded man cried out and moaned and the man telling the story was furious: He was so, so tired; all he wanted to do was sleep; he was desperate for sleep ... why wouldn't the wounded man hurry up and die so he could get some sleep?!

As morning broke, the wounded man at last fell silent. He had died.

And with the new day, the man telling the story found out that the single shot that rang out was an accident: Another Marine, hitting the dirt, had inadvertently discharged a round that hit the now-dead man. And the now-dead man was the best friend of the man telling the story.

The documentary was pretty good at depicting the vast and particular horrors of war -- the longing for glory and adventure that sucked men in from flat, rural existences; the diseases and hunger that wracked the body; the constant-constant-constant fear that the bullet with your name on it would find you; the atrocities meted out by friend and foe alike; the lack of information on the home front ... a lack that contrasted with the fact that neighborhood tapestries were picked apart by news that Johnny, the kid who had delivered your newspaper, or Pete, the high-school cut-up, or Frank, the boy who had been sweet on your daughter ... were all showing without a tear in newspaper clippings that announced the dead and neighborhood women baked casseroles and visited other women whose husbands and sons had been lost.


World War II -- a time when America, like its allies, could credibly be said to be under attack. In the event, of course, it made no difference who was under attack and who was attacking: It was just life and death, whoever you were. Life and death and despicably horrific... beyond-naming careless and ignorant and cruel. The simplicity of that war was and remains as magnetic as it was soul-searing. Magnetic with its 'patriotism' and 'glory' and 'victory' and 'defeat.' Magnetic in its collective will. Straightforward in ways that only the past can portray straightforwardness. The blasphemy in the heart is forsaken for the picayune desire to find 'meaning.' Nowadays, the United States tries to cover its offensive wars with the glory remembered in defensive times. It's a hard sell, but where sons and daughters, husbands and wives, are killed and maimed ... well, there has to be some 'meaning,' right? Here, have a serving of 'heroism' or 'patriotism'! See if you can choke that down!

The American philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." As a descriptive statement, I don't think his words can be faulted. But too often, the observation is used as a means of criticizing others, of disdaining their stupidity, of clubbing others with a wisdom the speaker implicitly asserts s/he possesses. Too often there is a cynicism-tinged arrogance of intelligence and an implicit assumption that people do learn from the past and are capable of doing better, of not repeating past mistakes. This, to my mind, is dumber than a box of rocks.


As an observable fact, I think Santayana was on target -- "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." But as a critique or criticism of others, it doesn't hold water. Human beings do, in fact, repeat mistakes made in the past. Same shit, different day. Same shit, different individual. Naturally, it all feels new and novel and important and pregnant with meaning because it is my shit, but that doesn't change the facts: Same shit, different day. Same shit, different individual.


The only conclusion I can reach is that expecting others to learn from the past is foolishness. The only thing that matters is what you can learn, what you can observe and digest and use to revise actions. The rest of it is wasteful, self-deluding eyewash... the same eyewash with which we have all washed our eyes for a long, long time. Well, it's your life and mine, your choice and mine.

Gautama the Buddha once observed, "It is not what others do and do not do that is my concern. It is what I do and do not do -- that is my concern."

He wasn't just whistling "Dixie."
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