How can understanding the past, help us to understand our world?

Understanding the past can help us to understand our world through increasing our understanding of people, society's, change, and our own moral sense.


History Helps Us Understand People and Societies


In 1905, George Santayana wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." History tends to repeat itself. While we may not be able to completely change the course of modern events, we can look back at the lessons from history and use them to change ourselves and influence our culture. History is the story of where we came from. History connects us with those people and cultures that developed, discovered, and or invented many of the things we rely upon for life today. We can thank our ancestors for our alphabet, our language, our numerical system, religions, and system of government. 
 

History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be


The past becomes the present, which turns into the future. The study of history helps us to see how people viewed themselves and events during their lifetimes and how those same things are viewed today.  History provides the best source of information to study the way things are in the world. We study history so we can understand why people and places changed and analyze causes of change around us today.  History serves as our laboratory.  Data from the past is our best evidence to figure out why humankind behaves as it does.




History Contributes to Moral Understanding



History is full of examples of good people to imitate and bad ones to learn from their mistakes.  Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past allows us to create our own moral sense of what is right and wrong, good and evil.  People who have faced difficulties, in real, historical circumstances can provide real inspiration. History can teach by example.  We can study heroes, the great men and women of history who successfully navigated through hardships by making good choices and also ordinary people who provide lessons
in courage, diligence, or made a difference in the world.




In conclusion, history plays a big part in everyone's lives. We use history to predict the the future, everything from the weather to the stock market.  We use history to introduce a new way of doing things, create new products, theories, and discoveries.  Without understanding our past we can not understand our world as it is today.  
       

http://www.wikipedia.org/

http://www.historians.org/pubs/free/whystudyhistory.htm    

http://blessedamongmen.blogspot.com/2007/10/ten-reasons-to-study-world-history.html