issue 120

柏拉图的世界UID: 2581296

第一次发自己写的AW，求狠批！
120. "So much is new and complex todaythat looking back for an understanding of the past provides little guidance forliving in the present."


The past is where we are from, and the complexity at present stems from it. Without review of history, comes not only helplessness towards today’s complexity, but also absence of self-cognition.


Admittedly, it is no doubt that our modern life is changing at a fantastic speed. A hundred years ago, people traveled by horse or just on foot, while today we can get the other side of earth just hours later on air. New technologies, new concepts are coming out one after another. These call for close studies of emerging factors, but also set forth a statement that today’s situations are totally composed of the purely fresh things, thereof studies of old things provides little as guidance.


Howbeit, the foregoing statement holds in itself the ignorance of an examine on the chain of mankind’s progress. As all we know, the progress of history is kind of accumulation and gradual transformation. All we have today are based on the things already existing. Thanks to the developments in the field of electronics, the modern computers were born, and then the spread of PCs contributed to the present of Internet. Meanwhile, the significance of arts largely depends on its history, to some extents. Reviewing arts in Middle Ages, geniuses in Renaissance, and the Modern Art works, all breakthroughs of concepts or techniques just can only be assessed against their progenitor. Beside technologies and arts, history also acts positively on the values, ethnics, morality of our contemporary society. Look at today’s clashes among Western culture, Confucian culture and Islamic culture, which appropriately demonstrate the differential origin and progress of human cultures. Like babies always have their own parents, nothing is the emergence for no reason.


History would teach us with the success and failure in the past as well. As the old saying goes, no one would succeed without failures. So many mistakes we people have made in the past: the War II, the environment pollution, the extinction of species and so on. Critical review of the past, facing to our faults frankly, and avoiding blindness as ever is necessity and a wise move


In the final analysis, standing for individuals aside from previous large scopes, experiences, whether ours or others’, come to be virtual conditions for us to temper our thoughts. For instance, when somebody faces frustration in his/her career, needs more strength to keep faith, he/she will probably think of Van Gogh, who hardly sold any of his works in his life, but stubbornly love arts and life. These emotions of our ancestors go through time and space, and help us intangibly.


To sum up, history gives what we had today, and influence our lives at present. History is a kind of encyclopedia in which we can find hints for today’s puzzles, and a fountainhead from which we gain spiritual strength. It is definitely good sense to study the past, learn from the past, and understand the values and cultures the past left.