Precis--- How much baggage are you carrying?

One of my favorite ideas that was discussed in this piece is the idea that history is always with us. I remember the common phrase that "if we are ignorant about history then we are doomed to repeat it". Foucault takes a little different idea about our continual connection with history, stating that we will reduce history to a series of pillar events and that we will then compare our actions to what happened in the past. This idea of comparing present with past, shows that no matter what you do, we are doomed to be with history. How many times in history class do students say that it would be great to have leaders like Washington and Lincoln again. But, in fact, these leaders would not be able to fit into the society we have today, so they may not actually be effective leaders. This idea, that we will continue to compare our lives to the past, so will never be able to escape it.