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Does history matter?
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by BelaynehKassaWubie | August 5, 2010 at 04:11 am
154 views | 2 Recommendations | 3 comments
Hitler, the Nazi, was destroying millions of Israelis to the extent that their corpse was used as input in the soap factories. But today Israel is training the German fighter jet pilots. What I understood from this is that war history does not matter! I remember Mandela when he possessed the presidential power, his first speech was ‘forget the past (Apartheid) and let’s project about the future’! Really a memorable speech!
Thus, history, especially war history, does not matter unless it leaves something stillness. If history leaves something of economic or emotional value such as the Egyptian pyramids, the Ethiopian Axum Monuments, the Chinese Great Wall, etc, then history matters because such old historic heritages can be used in boosting tourism economy!
It is also true that recent history can also be used as a trigger for future projection. Any planning is made based on data of recent facts. Otherwise whether glorious or not the relevance of past history is minimal. Is it not?
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (3)
at 04:39 on August 5th, 2010
Unfortunately, we are driven by history more than the present. And in this process we keep on making history.
at 11:44 on August 5th, 2010
We are supposed to learn from history and not scorn it.It is often said that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.Words of Polibius must we remember on value of studying history:"There are two ways open to all men of changing their ways for the better-one is through their own disasters and one through those of others;that involving one's own calamities is the more vivid,but the one involving those of others is less painful..........(W)e must agree that the experience accruing from a serious study of history is the best education for actual life;for such experience is the only kind that ,without injuring us ,makes us true judges of the better course of action on every occasion and in every set of circumstances".
"To study history means to search for and discover the forces that are the causes of those results which appear before our eyes as historical events....."-Hitler in Mein Kampf
The importance of history is that study and analysis of past events help us shape a better future by examinig the causes and consequences of the past mistakes and avoidance of their repetition in future.
at 01:41 on October 5th, 2010
It is not so much that history doesn't matter but that our societies have progressed to become entirely different societies. We have to learn from the mistakes made in the past, not forget them; that is the value of history.