History: Why Study It?

In our present world we observe events that change the course from our history, but before we can know where we are going, or the events that got us to this point, we need to know where we started from and how much has actually changed.

By studying, recording, reviewing and tracking patterns in our world’s history we can derive an understanding to a new direction towards our future, or at least how we got thus far. (Pickett, 2002, p. 657)This process can also teach us mishaps that we should avoid or solutions and or events we should recreate or plainly repeat. After all, one can learn so much from past mistakes and by comparing past actions, such as the cause and effect factor, and how they can be used to correct and create a new outcome.

Also by dissecting past events and records, we can also track patterns in human nature and what motivated them then. With this in mind we can see that the emotional ties to past events haven’t had much difference to now.  The one thing, which remained almost a constant throughout history, is “mankind.” Civilization’s have fallen and have risen, have conquered and have been imperialized. Religions, traditions and cultures have been born, morphed and even become extinct, but the one element that remains is mankind and its emotional nature which drives them to expand their land, explore and test their boundaries. (Graeme Donald Snooks, 1996, pp. 175-180)

Driven emotions such as greed, pride, the need to expand, fame and to have power, are all contributed human factors that remained constant throughout our history and now our current events. With this understanding of our nature, how little we changed and much of our primitive behavior changed, mutilated as well as groomed the world we now live in today.

References

1.      Graeme Donald Snooks. (1996). Wheel of Fire. In The Dynamic Society (pp. 175-180). 11 New Fetter Lane, London: Routledge; Taylor & Frances Group. Retrieved January 2, 2009, from http://books.google.com/books?id=wV_mDZ36gqYC&pg=PA175&lpg=PA175&dq=mankind’s+motivations+has+not+changed&source=web&ots=hICGx0HoI9&sig=P3wKu51AIqqJganv3HSEk3Y0z64&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA176,M1

2.      Pickett, J.P. (2002). American heritage college dictionary (4th ed., p. 657). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Retrieved January 2, 2009, from http://campus.ctuonline.edu/MainFrame.aspx?ContentFrame=/Default.aspx