issue221 十二月高强组周一作业

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题目：ISSUE 221 - "The chief benefit of the study of history is to break down the illusion that people in one period of time are significantly different from people who lived at any other time in history."
字数：563          用时：1:07:31          日期：2006-11-19
观点：学习历史可以有多方面帮助，不能说消除错觉是最重要的。
1 同意学习历史可以解决我们对不同时代人很不一样的错觉
2 学习历史对个人来说还可以增加知识，给我们激励。
3 学习历史对社会来说可以使社会更融洽稳定。


Is the chief benefit of the study of history is to break down the illusion that there are significant different with people lived in the varying eras as the speaker claims? I concede that one of the benefits the study of history provides is the realization of the similarity between us and our ancestors, a certain means of self-identification. However, the history offers benefits to the individual as well as the society in many other aspects such as aspiration, devotion and knowledge, and we cannot assess which benefit the history provides is more important, in another word, the major benefit.

Admittedly, the history responds to our illusion that people in different periods have significant differences and have proved that illusion is not reasonable rooted. With the limited life span and individual experience, many people consider that we are different from people lived in other period. Because we observe the so called "generation gap" which exits between different groups in different ages, and also because take for granted that different living conditions brings the differences among people. Nevertheless, the history, the somehow precise record of the past, provides us clear insight into past and the human inner world. Such resource which seems the human evolvement as a comparatively continuous procedure hence reveals the similarities among people in different periods.  the accumulation of human affairs in the present as well as the past inform us that even with the outer environment alters all the time, we human spiritual element such as mores, logic , aesthetic evaluation and others are mostly remain the same.

While study of history provide us insight into the past and therefore diminish the illusion that people are different in different eras, we cannot neglect other values that study of history could bring us. On the personal level, such study can provide us certain measure of inspiration which enhance our determination of striving. In the history of various sparking great people contributing to the progress of mankind, we can learn many instances of determination, struggling, and insistences. For example, the special experience of  Mandela, the remarkable leader of South Africa who stayed in prison for 28 years fighting for the equal rights of black people, to some extent, strengthen our inspiration to never give up our belief in hardness. Moreover, the study of history can also afford us knowledge on human characteristics and the evolvement of society.

On the societal level the study of history can enforce the stable and harmony of the society. By inform people with a nation's glorious accomplishments, members of the society tend to be more proud of their nation and the devotion of the nation heightens. To study the past and find out the common defects of the society in different periods helps to find profound and appropriate solution to them. And also afford the effective methods to handle social problems, and then apply them in the present, though which the society is more likely to be strong and stable. And such function of the study of history is no less valuable than the clarification of the delusion.

In sum, although the elimination of the delusion that different people in one period are significantly different from people in other time is one important benefits of the study of history, it is too specious to assert that is the chief benefits in that our benefits such as the supply of knowledge are also vital to individuals as well as societies.