Many will be struck by an abundance of inspiration when reading this question, which will make it difficult to answer. However, after some reflection, I came to the conclusion that answering with a clear yes or no would be a crime against academic thinking. This is one of those questions that raises endless pros and cons. No one is ever really right, or indeed everyone is right.
Crooked analogies
Every day we use past experiences to make judgments about an event in the present. Not only do we do this privately, but journalists also do it for us. When explaining a current event, references to the past often arise almost immediately. After the murder of Theo van Gogh, a line was immediately drawn with the murder of Pim Fortuyn. Both were charismatic and controversial people with outspoken opinions, associated with the right side of the political spectrum. So you could say that this line makes perfect sense. On the other hand, you also want something useful to emerge from an analysis. But if you consider that the background and motive of the perpetrators are so different, and that the social consequences are so completely different, is it still useful to compare the two events? Wouldn’t it be better to ignore the other when analyzing one thing, in order to arrive at a more neutral and less biased conclusion?
Dangerous reductionism
Another striking example of how history may be misused was brought to me by The Independent. There, in March 2008, there was news about some commotion surrounding the visit that German Chancellor Angela Merkel made to Israel. As part of her visit, she was scheduled to give a speech to the Knesset. A number of members of parliament refused to attend because she would give her speech in German. The same happened when Johannes Rau in 2000 and Horst Koehler in 2005 gave a speech in German during a state visit in which they admitted guilt for the actions of Germans in the Second World War. Even then, a number of Knesset members refused to attend or resigned demonstratively. They did not need to listen to a reason in the language of the murderers of their ancestors, that was their reasoning. They clearly refer to the past, but are very selective in this. They point to a terrible (and closed) period in history, but completely forget what happened in the intervening decades. What they forget, for example, is the special relationship that the two countries have, and the unconditional support that Germany has been giving to Israel for years, despite various human rights violations that would not be tolerated by any other state. This is a good example of reductionism, whereby analogies that fit neatly into the picture of one’s own way of thinking are frequently cited, but those that do not are just as easily swept under the table. Once a reductionist interpretation of the past has been accepted as truth, it is difficult to reverse this and look for the missing pieces of the puzzle.
Learning from the past
On the other hand, there are of course also situations in which history is an extremely useful or even necessary addition to issues that are going on in the present. For example, many political perceptions are based on past behavior. For example, if we look at the good political relationship between France and Germany, it can be called remarkable. But if we note that this friendly bond has had almost exclusively positive consequences for the whole of Europe and can serve as a lubricant for the European monetary union, then we will not be so quick to doubt its usefulness. Because who wants to go back to the situation in which France and Germany faced each other as two hostile blocs and war was always lurking? Now that we know how wrong things can go if that bond is broken, both countries will maintain a friendly and flexible attitude towards each other, thus saving us from the mistakes of the past. Now this argument is very similar to that of the famous historian Francis Fukuyama, who argues that history is almost exclusively useful in a negative sense, but this does not seem true to me.
Time for reflection
Another usefulness of history for current affairs is that it can lead to reflection. People who point out the problematic situation in elderly care often point back to the past. An argument to support their statement that we should do more to guarantee good care for our elderly compatriots is that these people built up our country shortly after the war, and that we should be grateful to them for that. If we cast our minds back to that time and realize that they indeed did very important work for later generations, this can motivate us to take action today. When we return to the present with our thoughts, we can hardly help but come to the conclusion that we are doing something completely wrong. In this way, looking at history can lead to reflection.
Conclusion
Considering all this, we can conclude that history is absolutely useful, but we must be vigilant. Whenever we find history playing a role in our thought process, we should carefully consider whether we are using the past appropriately. Are we not skipping passages? Are we not too one-sidedly informed? And didn’t we just happen to use only those bits that we found interesting enough? Only when we can answer no to all those questions can we say that we are looking at history in a responsible way, and only then does history have a positive use. my view on