Issue103

zyqingUID: 2605201

103."The study of history has value only to the extent that it is relevant to our daily lives."

The speaker alleges that the study of history has merit only insofar as it is relevant to our daily lives. The allegation overemphasizes the relevance between the history and our daily lives but overlooks history can teach us far more than how to deal with our daily lives.

To begin with, we can learn much daily lives wisdom from our ancestors by studying history. For example, the book named The Art of War written by Sun Tzu who lives hundreds of years ago is still has great merit to our daily lives. The Art of War is a book about how to win in a war. It introduces 36 kinds of strategies which imply great wisdom. In this era of peace, the idea of the book is very helpful in the scope of modern commerce which is regard as a war. And the thinking pattern is also valuable for us to deal with our competitors. In addition, many ancient philosophers like Chinese Confucius leave us uncountable intellectual asserts which are useful in our daily lives.

As we all know, the study of history is not always relevant to our daily lives. And the part of history which is irrelevant to out daily lives still has great merit. We can avoid repeating the same mistakes which have happen before by studying the history. For example, we can have a painful lesson from the twice world war which kill so many people and break so many families. After the painful lesson we understand the war is not the valid way to solve conflicts and learn to solve conflicts by negotiation.

In addition, the history can make us understand today more thoroughly by studying yesterday. Someone regard the history as a minor of today. We can prove it with following examples. The students majoring architecture usually need to spend a large sum of time to study the history of architectures in all over the world. After that, they begin to understand why architectures appear the style and form what they looks today. And it is the history make those students understand the nature of architecture which make they can design architectures belong to their own era. That means history can also instruct us about the future.

In sum, the speaker’s perspective to history is too limited. The studying of history not only can instruct our daily lives, but also can warn us not repeat the same mistake which happen before and help us to understand things of today more thoroughly. In the final analysis, studying history will bring us to a better future.