I love history, but it is not a science, its too subjective, too open to interpretation. The same war or revolution or great leader's reign is interpreted differently by different historians, and by different ages. And you cannot teach history, only your vision of it. I have never been present at an event or experienced anything later reported by the press where the documentation really resembled the events I actually witnessed. You can write down dates, and collect eyewitness accounts, and accumulate old records, but assembling them into a narrative is more like philosophy or literary criticism or psychology than science. I love all three, but I don't take them too seriously. And when the events occur in the distant past, who can tell today what happened, or much less, why?

The people who actually experience history only see a little piece of it, through the filter of their own involvement. They saw the battle only from their own foxhole. Those who come later have perspective and see it in its full context, but miss the detail and the directness, the human effect. They only have their maps and reports, and never smell the gunpowder and the blood. Even the most honest reporters add their interpretation and prejudices to the account. What survives is only a poor memory. Have you ever visited, many years later, a house you lived in as a child? You will remember it, but it will have changed. Not just because of additions made by new owners over the years, but because you, the witness, hasve changed.

We need to study history, but not for the old reason, of refraining from "repeating its mistakes". We need to study it precisely to understand how it can be viewed differently by different people, and even by the same person over different times. And we also need to study it so we can appreciate how much is lost forever in the fog of time. The world of old Tampa my grandparents and their friends talked about is very different than what I pick up from others. I know I'm missing a great part of the story, especially since the witnesses can't even agree on it! I have studied a great deal about the history of my town, and the role my people played in it. I have read the work of scholars and have talked to people I know who actually lived those events. And I have heard people report the observations and conversations of those from even further back in the past. But I still see factions and disagreement and differences and old struggles and the clash of opinions. There is no objective truth, except in those areas where it really doesn't matter, like the exact date a building burned down. Even as kids in history class, we realized memorizing dates was a waste of time.

History is not a science, in the end, it teaches you nothing except that no one really knows exactly what happened, or why. The only lesson it can really give us is that those who really think they can learn from history, and who think they can apply its lessons to the present, are dangerously deluded. No knowledge is worthless, and I still feel it is important to study the past, but never use it to justify what you really want to do anyway. Use it to help you understand how easy it is to fool yourself, a little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing. Do not base your decisions today by reconstructing the errors of your forebears. To think you can avoid their mistakes implies you are somehow wiser than them, or that you can see more now than they thought they could see then. Remember, if they did indeed err, they felt exactly as smug as you do now when they made their miscalculations.

That, is the true lesson of history.