A New World of Warcraft

Though few of us would dispute the proposition (commonly attributed to George Santanya) that those who cannot remember the past are preparing themselves to repeat its mistakes, it’s advisable to keep your hand on your wallet when it comes up for sale in the marketplace of ideas, especially in times of open conflict. As David Rieff has argued in In Praise of Forgetting, the ‘moral duty’ to remember the past is often hijacked and manipulated by those wanting to exercise power in the present, and even when this isn’t the case, historical parallels can lend themselves to a simplistic moral calculus. (We’ve all encountered saloon-bar generals whose only touchstone for geopolitical relations is the Munich Agreement of 1938.) But perhaps the best reason for adopting an attitude of caveat emptor in this connection is that historical parallels (though often revealing) can obscure the extent to which current events are evidence of a world in flux. In looking for echoes of past occurrences, we downplay that which is radically new. [More here.]