I Learned the Lesson of History

The lessons of history are very, very, very clear. Pick any year in history, whatever we think is true, that year, 1900, 15 years later, it’s a whole entirely different world. And we all know in 1900 how the world is, and we should be saying to ourselves, find me a weird guy. Find me a strange guy to tell me how this is going to change. 1950, 15 years later, everything we knew, everything we knew was totally wrong.

So I, at least, have learned that, that lesson of history. And perhaps that’s why I’m more– not interested, more I’m excited when I start looking at the way the world is today and what we all know. Because I know what we all know is not going to be true in 15 years, no matter what it is. And my problem is how do I figure it out. How do I figure it out? Whatever we know today, no matter what it is is not going to be true in 15 years.

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I’ve learned over my career, not just my career, but reading about the world, the stranger it sounds, the more you should say, wait a minute. That sounds really strange. Let me look at it. Let me hear what’s going on. Because I have certainly learned that over my life, not just my life. You read history. You read anything. As I said before, the lesson of history is that most people don’t learn the lesson of history. They ignore the lesson of history. Now, we all know that if we’d invested in China 1981, we’d be the richest people in the room right now. And yet, in 1981, including me, we would have said what’s wrong with you? Don’t you know about Mao Zedong? Doesn’t he know about the Great Leap Forward? Doesn’t he know about all this stuff, what “Chinese” is?

Or Japan: Don’t you know about the disaster of what this country was? If you’d said Japan, don’t you know about Hiroshima? The atomic bomb? You don’t know about the dictator, the emperor? How could you  invest there? They’re little, bitty yellow people who must be dishonest and cruel. But those are the lessons of history.

Reprinted from Jim Rogers Blog.

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