【TRANSFORMER】_ISSUE221_0810

blade134UID: 2328542

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."

yesrushUID: 2443769

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: 604          TIME: 00:45:00          DATE: 2009-8-10 17:34:07

History, a mirror of past, provide our modern persons more. Someone claims that that the fact, that ancient people are significantly different from people living in contemporary time, sounds right at the first glance, but virtually unfair in the deep thought, and the most major purpose of discussing history is to illustrate this fact. From my own perspective, I agree with this opinion. Furthermore, the similar point in different era obtained via researching history, contributes to study the past invaluable experience.

Admittedly, it appears that the lifestyle and awareness of people living in the past, especially thousands of years ago, are absolutely different from those of our modern people, nonetheless, this difference can be decreased by understanding of science and technology. One of the paradigmatic examples is the understanding of our world. The ancient people believed that the earth, where we live, is the nucleus of university, nevertheless a pupil student in the present can correct this wrong argument, and hold the view that our earth moves around the sun, and neither earth nor sun is in the center of university. With respect to lifestyle, we can find more distinct features. Our ancestors make the facilities only by hand while the machines are widely used in factories nowadays to produce projects. However, this difference in the field of awareness and lifestyle is the product of the difference of level of science and technology. It is probable that the ancient people will process similar views on how the world works and how to handle the dairy issues if they master our modern science and technology.

However, to some extent, people in current shares parallel values with people who lived at any other time in history. The line between good and bad, right and wrong is the same no matter when we are. What's more, we honor our precursors who have high moral vales, and consequently tend to study the favorable individuality from them. Bruno, who would rather being killed in the fire than telling the truth, encourages us to take courage when chasing truth. Lincoln, who ran three miles in order to return six cents, tells us the value of honesty. Beethoven, who completed a mass of symphonies regardless his deafness, instructs us to face the difficulty more bravely. In sum, many similar aspects between the ancient time and the contemporary help us get fruits so that we can better improve ourselves.
        
What’s more, after we fall out of the false impressions of entirely dissimilar in all epochs, we can arrive at a correct standpoint that the event in the past is inclined to be recurrence. Not only does the analysis of the past conditions lead to make correct decision recently, but also previous experience of our precursors is treasure for us to deal with present-day business more effectively. The experience of settling financial Asian crises in 1997, provide a vast ocean of resource and servers a means for us to handle the financial crises took place last years. Another case is the water pollution in 1950s in Japan area, caused by the mercury, taking away many lives of human and creatures in sea. After investigating the cause of this disaster, people now pay more attention on the environmental protection and avoid similar catastrophe again. Taking the repeating property of history into account, hardly can we evaluate and deal with the current matters without retrospecting the history.

Newton once said "I can see further it is by standing on the shoulder of the giant." The reason why Newton can stand on the history, this giant's shoulder, is that history shows the similar situation rather than completely different situation.