COMMENT: When I ask someone about your theories, they claim you are unconventional. They said the same thing about Einstein and even Kynes in the early 1920s. It seems that anyone who thinks outside the box is labeled unconventional, but in the end, they adopt the very theories and become conventional. They seem to make history repeat, for they always defend their position, which is obviously wrong.
I just wanted to say that historical recurrence is not something new. It has played an important role in developing Western historiography since antiquity. I am sure you are well versed. The view that “history repeats itself” is characteristically Greek. They understood everything was cyclical from the observations of cosmic and social cycles. I believe you have explained that history repeats itself better than anyone. It is human nature for people to respond the same way to similar situations regardless of the century.
Your intention to hold a WEC for the next generation is vital. You are offering something academia will only acknowledge when they are forced into embarrassment as to place during the Great Depression. Only then did they turn to Keynes.
There are those of us willing to donate to such a project.
Please consider the importance of this for the next generation.
Paul
ANSWER: History repeats because human nature is constant regardless of the century. But it is often also driven by notions of retribution, rebirth, reenactment, and imitation. Both Hitler and Napoleon sought to resurrect the old Roman Empire. Because I witnessed the debasement of silver coinage in 1965 and was familiar with the debasement of Roman coinage and how they, too silver, plated bronze coinage to retain the appearance of silver as we created a nickel-clad coinage in 1965, as a kid, I instantly saw history repeating.
Here is a Roman coin of Marius (268AD). You can see that the silver plating is starting to wear off, revealing the core is merely bronze. Inflation was soaring, and President Kennedy signed an executive order to remove silver from the coinage in 1963. Here, we see in Rome that inflation also soared once emperor Valerian I (253-260AD) was captured in battle by the Persians – the first emperor to have even been captured. That also set in motion a financial panic where bankers were uncertain if they should even accept Roman coins anymore.
By the middle of the second century BC, Rome, Polybius of Megalopolis, had written his Historiae to explain how Rome conquered the known world. These thirty-nine books received their finality after 146BC. At first, Polybius was interested in Greek affairs. He was stunned by the rise of Rome and its rapid expansion into an empire. He attempted what he would call universal history rather than just looking at Rome as a local aberration or fluke. His Anacyclōsis offered basic paradigms of historical recurrence that were below the surface. Indeed, Polybius established that studying history provided sound political training (cf. Hist. I, I,2).
Polybius’s famous discussion of the mixed character of Rome’s republican constitution is found in Book 6, chap. 5. It was certainly Polybius who presupposed that past events reflected various paradigmatic movements and patterns that would reemerge in current and future affairs. It seems that the Dark Ages, which saw the death of knowledge and independent thought in Europe, also altered our understanding of the world and cycles.
They burned Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) alive at the stake for merely agreeing with Calpurnicus in suggesting that the Earth rotated around the sun. The stupidity of the closed-minded at that time saw Haven must be above and Hell was below, so if the Earth was not fixed, then all religion was wrong. Thus, burn him alive as a heretic.
I greatly appreciate the offer. We will do something like that, for I do not have the time to write a plan for students.
