Issue48【Triple Week】第6次练习by ahng

ahngUID: 2605383

TOPIC: ISSUE48 - "The study of history places too much emphasis on individuals. The most significant events and trends in history were made possible not by the famous few, but by groups of people whose identities have long been forgotten."
WORDS: 696          TIME: 00:45:00          DATE: 2009-7-23 15:06:08

"History is a mirror", the issue over the study of history is often controversial. That statement above speaks that the study of history places too much emphasis on individuals since groups of people whose identities have long been forgotten also contribute to the most significant events and trends in history. In my point of view, in the study of history, we should pay attention to not only the individuals but also the public.

To begin with, significant individuals are always playing an important role in the events and trends in the long history of human beings. Hundreds of examples in the history can tell us that a responsible and capable leader is extremly necessary in leading the successful revolution or campaign, such as Napolen and Mao Zedong. As we know, an event always needs a big crowd of volunteers and pioneers to design and accomplish. Without a clear and straight object, the masses would be too hard to organize. In this case, the leader becomes a must. The leaders can give instructions, think of plans and inspire their partners to work and to fight. In a sense, the leaders are no more than the leaders. They have become the representation that can forever support the spirit of all the teammembers. As an old saying goes, "Dragons without a head are doomed to die." Without the leaders, any organization will definitely be faced with the failure.

Secondly, the power of nameless people is also a critial factor to the events or trends which can never be overlooked. "More people, more strength", it is true that a team can get more powerful by accumulating its population. On the one hand, an individual's power is obviously limited, but the groups' total power is unlimited. Within a groups of people, we can get more clever and competitive plans in account of the different ideas presented by different people. Just like most bussiness companies in the real world. They are always seperated into several groups with a large number of employees. Every day or every week the they may attend a meeting to discuss their companies' career. That's the wisdom of all the participants. On the other hand, even the most capable individual in the world is unable to make an big influence to the society without others' help. As a proverb, "One capable man always need three people to support". An event covers different kinds of aspects, which determines the participants involved in it need to play different roles and be responsible for different kinds of goals. Only when they all accomplish their work greatly, the whole event could be a success. For example, without the support of the vast public, how would the China's great revolution, occurred in the 1940s, be? No one can imagine that. In short, though they are nameless, the public still play a great part in the events.

Last but not least, in the respect of the study in history, I have to concede that it is really hard for us to get details about the nameless people due to the considerable number of them. First, the number of the public is too large to take into account. We are not able to investigate everyone who attends the events or trends.  China has a population of 1.3 billion. Could we describe the detail information of all of them? Of course not. What we can is just to select some representatives and make an deep understanding of their lives, such as the leaders, the models and some outstanding individuals. Second, the leaders, or the significant individuals actually are the representatives of the whole public. They are the spirit of the groups and the portrait of all the members. Thus, to pay more attention on the individuals is actually to pay attention on the whole groups. This is the way we have to study the history.

To sum up, according to the great influence of individuals and groups, we should never underestimate their roles in the study of history. However, due to the difficulty of investigating every participants, to pay more attention on the individuals is more feasible and more effective for us to study the history.