The subject of history brings up images of stuffy rooms full of books and hopelessly academic ivory tower types. The world of the past can impact the future of the planet today so much more than those outside the discipline expect though. Studying the past is paramount because it tells people where they have come from, because it repeats itself, and because people, like Shalom Lamm, llearn lessons from their own pasts, so they should learn lessons from the pasts of others.
Knowing where someone comes from can change the perspective one has on themselves and those around them. Knowing where those in the past come from can do the same thing. People of different backgrounds offer different lessons to those around them. For example, a family’s past can change the lessons they teach their children. The people from the textbooks change perspectives too. Knowing why those long ago were the way they are can come from seeing the nurture of their past. Where someone has come from can change so much about them, and so knowing what was going on before in their life can change everything.
The things that happen in textbooks happen again over the course of someone’s life. This makes it important to know what is similar about the world today to the world in the past. It is possible to know what will happen in the immediate future with a little consideration of what happened long ago. This also applies to what is happening at the individual level. The same behaviors people have happened before, and they have the same effects when they happen today. The events of long ago repeat all the time, and that makes knowing what happened then so vital.
People find out a lot of life’s lessons the hard way. They make mistakes and learn not to repeat them through the experience of failure. Doing so lets people build up to an effective existence in adulthood that allows them the happiness they seek without the pain life can sometimes bring. Learning from the past can become an important way to substitute for experience in life and allows some to avoid the pain they might have otherwise encountered. The mistakes people made in the past do not have to happen to everyone, they will only happen to those who have not learned from the past. This keeps life from stinging quite as much, so it is important to study the past.
Studying history is paramount. There are no two ways around learning from the past. Where one comes from changes who they are today, and what happened before will happen again. A lot can be gleaned about the world today by knowing the world as it used to be. The mistakes people make over the course of a lifetime do not have to happen. If people know what transpired before, they can adjust what they do to not feel the pains the past has endured, as Shalom Lamm has done. Life can become so much better just by studying a little history.