issue221 【文以载道二月小组】第四周第一次作业 flourish

flourishUID: 2569825

提纲：
invariants: unavoidable routine, morality, emotions, spirit, etc
variants: progress--defect improved,knowledge enriched, society advanced.
sum up: history value, benefits.

TOPIC: ISSUE221 - "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."
WORDS: 398          TIME: 02:30:00          DATE: 2008-12-9 20:07:06

  The speaker asserts that the study of history would help us to get a better understanding of the fundamental facts that has never changed during the evolvement of human race. I'd agree with that people throughout history, from primitive to modern, western hemisphere to eastern, do share much in common in every aspect of their life, however, people in one period of time would never overlap with the ones of any other time as to the significant differences lying beneath surface.

  As looking into the ordinary life of people in different times of history, it would be easily found that they had never walked out of the fundamental limits of life . Not an individual is able to avoid the permanent and repetitious routine of being born, growing up, trying to seize the fate, and heading toward death. we share the same emotions of appreciating the parents, falling love with someone, struggling for a future, and enjoying a stingy leisure. Also, people in modern times has inherited from our ancestors the moralities, traditions, knowledge and spirits, which are the essential rules and indispensible properties of life. While, obtaining merely such a recognition of what history has implied may lead to a pessimistic attitude toward life, it is much more important for us to be aware of the progress having taken place in the successive vicissitude of life.

  Since the history of human has been a history of progress, knowledge enriched, governance improved, and economic developed. Taking the present time for example, superstitions are no longer popular because of the endeavor in disclosing a great many mysterious natural phenomena, which conducts a more objective and wiser view of the world. Autocracy is declared termination as a result of the pursuit for freedom and personal rights in the way of establishing democracy. Economics has been developing at a unprecedented speed owing to the technological revolutions, bringing the so called information era. In a word, despite the fundamental similarities flowing in their vein, people of today have been leading a life style entirely different from the past, and so does the other generations in other times of history.

  Taking into account both the invariants and variants history has written in its elaborate record, we can finally draw a conclusion about the likeness and unlikeness between ourselves and the predecessors, and thus benefit from what the past reflects for present and future.

[ 本帖最后由 flourish 于 2008-12-9 21:26 编辑 ]