If You Know Your History

This weekend would have been Bob Marley's 65th birthday, so let's play with a line from "Buffalo Soldier":

"If you know your history, then you know where you're coming from."

Is this true? Is history really that important? Was Santayana right that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it or is it more important to simply know what is going on now? Does it really matter how we got here, if we just care about where we are going? Was Winston Churchill correct that "history is written by the victors" and thereby is a biased account that reinforces the power of the powerful works and thus against Marley's image of the knowledge of history as an emancipating force?

Either way, happy birthday, Bob. We should all indeed lively up ourselves.