“Those who
cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” is an aphorism commonly attributed to George Santayana who did say something
like it – as did Burke and Churchill. Another aphorism is “History does not
repeat, but it often rhymes." This is commonly attributed to Mark Twain
though the first known appearance of it in print was in 1970. Misattribution
(or uncertain attribution) of some pithy line or other is a mistake folks tend
to repeat – or possibly rhyme.
Whoever
first said them, the two sayings will continue to be quoted because they strike
home on a personal as well as a public level: we as individuals all too
regularly repeat our mistakes by failing to learn from our pasts. A big reason
is that circumstances seldom repeat in exactly the same way. They merely rhyme,
and so we are caught off our guard time and again. For example, if we spent
more than we ought to have done on our credit cards last month, it is likely we
will do it again even though we are duly punished when the bill arrives. The
new charges won’t be exactly the same, after all, but will be for the purchase
of a very different mix of temptations. In our romantic lives we often date someone
with the same traits that worked out so badly for us the last time – but it’s
not exactly the same person.
This is one
of the conclusions of recent studies published in The Journal of Consumer Psychology and Neuron on why people repeat the same mistakes – or, more
accurately, the same type of mistakes. To be sure, getting burned once slows us
down the second or third time. We don’t rush as quickly into the same type of mistake,
but we are still likely to make it. Says Roozbeh Kiani, co-author of the Neuron study, “the deliberative approach
we take to avoid repeating a mistake neither enhances nor diminishes the
likelihood we'll repeat it."
We make our
characteristic mistakes based on our personality and on the neural pathways we
create as we navigate through life. Personality is pretty hard to change even
if we want to; part of it is innate and part was acquired during our formative
years. More recent neural pathways are another matter. We create neural
pathways whenever we do anything new, and (like following a beaten path rather
than pushing through brush) it’s easier to reuse them than to make new ones even
when they lead us nowhere good. It is how we form habits. The formation and
maintenance of these pathways is mediated by a mix of neurochemicals.
Fortunately we are not irretrievably
doomed to repeat our mistakes. We may be impelled, but we are not compelled. It
is possible to rewire these pathways. Numerous books aimed at popular audiences
explain how to do go about making the changes. One that is as good and
accessible as any is Habits of a Happy
Brain: Retrain Your Brain to Boost Your Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin, &
Endorphin Levels by Loretta Breuning, PhD, founder of the Inner Mammal Institute. Will such rewiring prevent us from making mistakes? No. But at least the mistakes are more likely to be
new ones, which counts for something.
Truly traumatic mistakes also can alter
pathways. For example, while there are people who engage in serial marriage, rhyming past
errors over and over, there are others who experience a particularly bad one
and swear off the institution forever. If asked if they would consider getting
married again, the response will be something like, “Has hell frozen over?”
That response might or might not be a mistake itself, but, even if it is, it is
not a repeat of the old one. (There are even some who don't back off, but change their pattern and make a go of a second marriage.) But while trauma is a quicker path to rewiring
those circuits than the slower deliberate method, generally speaking it’s not
worth it. Choosing it is almost certainly a mistake.
Tracy Nelson – I Don’t Do That Kind of Thing
Anymore
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