history... is history important??

Question

one of the presidents of the US once said "there is a flower.
the flower needs roots. and that flower is like the US, we need to study our history in order to grow." so... i guess its important...
what about u??

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Answer 1

I guess when you said "our history" you meant history of US. Than you should definitely learn your history to know what Bush is doing. The history of massacre and genocide.

Answer 2

History is just one damn thing after another. I hate to rain on your parade but we do not learn from the past. For starters, each generation has to learn its lessons for itself. Second, even the most "well-informed" and humane intention has a ripple effect and ramifications beyond our ability to predict much less prevent. Third, and most importantly, who writes the history from which we are supposed to learn? You know the saying, "the devil can cite scripture to his purpose"? The supposed lessons are only the spin of those who would have you believe a certain way. Life will always be a struggle, with compassion a luxury for those who have the time and surplus to indulge in it. So... is history important? Only you can answer that I guess. To me it is, as an epic and thrilling story...a book from which to read for a few moments in passing, a long record of human folly and glory. In can inspire certainly, but I just think it rarely teaches because humans always have the desire "to find out for myself" and there can be no lessons in chaos.

Answer 3

If you fail to learn from history you are bound to repeat it.

Here is some history
under the Dem's crime went to its highest levels ever
under the Dem's taxes went to their highest levels
under the Dem's we have been brought into all but 2 wars in the history of the US
under the Dem's the division in the races grew to levels higher than has been seen since segregation
Oh yeah segregation was also fought for by the Dem's

What you should learn is that the Dem's are bad for America, foreign policy, and race relations.

If you do not learn from history you are bound to repeat it, and as this last election has shown Americans do not learn from history.

Answer 4

Oh yes - vitally important.

Without history, you cannot understand how to evolve your civilisation - the same mistakes would be made over and over again.

David Crabtree uses Stalinist Russia to illustrate the point,

In 1917 the Communists took control of Russia. They began to exercise control over how the history of their country ought to be told. They depicted the tsar as oppressive and cruel. The leaders of the revolution, on the other hand, were portrayed in a very positive light. The Communist government insisted that these leaders, and in particular Lenin, understood more clearly than any one else what Russia needed and what course of action the government ought to follow. According to the official history, Lenin made no mistakes and he passed his virtually infallible understanding on to the other leaders of the party. The official history presented Lenin and Stalin as kind, compassionate, wise, nearly divine leaders. Consequently, difficulties that people in the Soviet Union experienced were all attributable to capitalism. The nation's economic backwardness, the need for a massive military and tight security, and domestic crime were all ultimately tied to the influence of capitalistic countries. This is the perspective of history that was taught to Soviet children for half a century.

In the seventies and eighties, several things happened to shake people's confidence in this view of history. One was the publication of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. This work was the product of years of historical research by the author. He interviewed scores of prisoners and did extensive research to chronicle the genesis and development of the chain of labor camps that dotted the Soviet Union. His book described the cruelty and injustice of the system in great detail; but most important of all, he was able to show that Lenin and Stalin were active and knowing participants in the formation of this brutal institution.

Solzhenitsyn's depiction of these leaders was incompatible with the official history. And if the official history was wrong, the legitimacy and justification for Soviet rule was all brought into question. In 1979, a Soviet emigre, after having read Gulag Archipelago, told me, "The impact of this book will be far more devastating to Soviet power than an atomic bomb." I am convinced that one of the reasons the Soviet Union disintegrated is because people began to doubt the official history. Ask Gorbachev if history matters.

Answer 5

Hi DJ,

Yes. History is very important. As the philosopher George Santayana once observed...

"Those who fail to learn the lessons of the past are condemned to repeat them."

If we are to grow, we must learn from our failures, or we just keep on repeating the same mistakes, over and over again.

Cheers, mate.

Answer 6

Have you every heard the saying that history always repeats it self. it s the truth. if we study history and know about the past, it will help us make better decisions for the future

Answer 7

Well, without history there is no future either. I mean, those two things are connected to each other in every way. History helps us not to make same mistakes again. We know what we know thanks to generations who lived before us.... so, yeah, history *IS* important :)

Answer 8

History is only important if the future is important.

Answer 9

History is definitely important, but I don't think that it should be required in schools across America until grade 11. It is something that we need, but I think we should have historians who know all of the history needed, and they can be utilized to have the world "grow."

Answer 10

yes, history is the only way of knowing our future