My Take | Hong Kong is not Tiananmen, history offers no guidance
- Western writers should remember that today’s city protests, thanks to police professionalism and restraint, cannot be compared to Beijing events in 1989
Virtually all my friends, regardless of their academic or business backgrounds, are history buffs. Accountants, senior civil servants, retired scientists and investors with mainland factories – all read lots of history books and biographies, the more obscure the better.
That’s one reason why I have always thought that the famous saying, usually attributed to the philosopher George Santayana, is bunk. You know the one – people who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
People, at least the literate ones, usually read too much history, not too little. It’s okay to read history for entertainment, like reading novels, which history basically is – mostly fiction. People are always learning and drawing lessons from it. But, as often as not, it gives you a false sense of knowledge and wisdom when you have none.
Here’s a column in T he New York Times from that bleeding-heart liberal Nicholas Kristof, whom I respect, mostly.