# lessons of history (past-model)

*Ordinarily means:* what past events are said to teach about how to act now

The past read as a model of what current acts will do, so walls are set now where past acts were read as crossing one.

- Computed level: L19 (depth in the emergence graph, not abstraction)
- Status: published  ·  Domain: agency

## Emergence
**Emerges from:** [past](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-past.temporal), [read](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-read.information), [model](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-model.representation), [current](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-current.present), [act](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-act.deed), [wall](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-wall.range-end), [set](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-set.fix), [time](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-time.dimension), [cross](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-cross.pass), [history](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-history.record), [narrative](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-narrative.self-story)

**Through:** History is compressed into a model and then run forward on the current case; which past is chosen as the model sets the walls, so dispute over the lesson is dispute over which story the self keeps.

**Novel properties:**
- the past used to predict, not to honour
- walls set by analogy
- the choice of precedent as the real decision

## Examples
- George Santayana wrote in The Life of Reason (1905) that 'those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'. *(philosophy)*

---
*Canonical: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-lessons-of-history.past-model*  
*Structured data: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-lessons-of-history.past-model.json*  
*Every definition provably resolves to space, time, energy and pattern.*