Issue221 历史揭示人类没有改变，求互拍

G10T5UID: 2101393

Issue221  历史揭示人类没有改变
------摘要------
作者：寄托家园作文版普通用户     共用时间：43分40秒     651 words
从2005年7月9日14时57分到2005年7月9日15时43分
------题目------
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.
------正文------
Although as biological entities, there is not significant difference among different times' people, our lives and perspective about the nature and human beings have changed extremely. So I doubt the speaker's assertion that the chief benefit of the study of history is to tell us that we remain unchanged throughout the history.

First of all, our life has changed greatly, especially in nowadays information age. The emergence of computers and the Internet poses huge influence on almost every aspects of our daily life. The most obvious one is that they have changed the means of getting knowledge. While even just 20 years ago we should quickly scan huge number of books to find a small piece of information, today what we do is just typing some keywords in Google or other search engines which is more efficient. More importantly, compared with our former limited information resources, knowledge and information provided by the Internet seem to be infinite. Another important effect brought about by computers and the Internet is that our communicational means also is changed. Letters are on longer the main ways of communication which have yielded to E-mail. With the help of this new technology, we can send a message from China to America using less than one second that is unimaginable by our fathers. In short, the development of science and technology has made a fast, efficient and convenient daily life possible which is completely different from that of our ancestors.

Not only is our daily life changed, but also our perspective about the nature. Before the emergence of the modern science, our ancestors could not explain numerous natural phenomena, such as storm, lighting and the movement of stars. Because of the lack of necessary scientific knowledge, they created the gods and other supernatural powers which mastered these mysterious phenomena and even humans' destinies. For example, although we all know that lighting is created by the collision of two electronic clouds, in our ancestors' eyes, lighting is guidance provided by these supernatural powers. So while today's scientists are eager to explore how to apply the huge energy of lighting to serve humans, they submerged themselves in explaining the meaning hidden in the lighting. Moreover, although on one hand our ancestors put their lives under the control of the gods, on the other hand they regarded themselves as only existence and hastily put the Earth in the center of the university. But Copernicus told us the Earth is just a normal planet which is not the center of the university and even not the center of the solar system. Hence, we began to explore outside space and firmly believe that we are not sole intelligent creatures.

What's more, our perspective about human beings is also changed. We have gained a consensus that every person is equal and we should provide equal opportunity for everyone to pursue a better life. But if we investigate our history, we should find that the truth is not accepted by our ancestors. In their time, all persons were divided into separate unequal classes. It was the obligation of lower classes to serve higher classes. Slave trading is legal and slaves had not any opportunities to pursue their better future irrespective of their personal endeavor. Moreover, former people even including women themselves conceded that men were superior to women. So in that time, women were forced to stay in home to cultivate children and take care of their husbands while men went out to earn money. The financial inequality inevitably led to the inequality of social status. But now, we praise democracy, humanity and equality which are very different from the thoughts of our ancestors.

In sum, although our bodies remain unchanged, our lives, respective about the nature and humans have changed sharply. In order to know these changes, the study of history is indispensable which reveals our ancestors' lives and thoughts to us and then make the comparison possible.