Issue120【六人作文小组】第4周第3次作业

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TOPIC: ISSUE120 - "So much is new and complex today that looking back for an understanding of the past provides little guidance for living in the present."
WORDS: 724
TIME: 上午 12:45:00
DATE: 2009-1-28
提纲1，历史trends的作用
2，了解人的罪恶
3了解人的美德
4，总结，了解人
Are we living in a smaller world with globalization compared with our ancestors? Are we enjoying more convenience than before thanks to the development of technology since industrial revolution? The answer should be a yes. It is true that our ancestors can never utilize the washing machines that make our life easier and surf the Internet, which makes the world smaller. But when looking back to the road that human beings have struggled, fighted and cooperated, we uncover many precious traits, either to the specific issue or to the mankind's morale, or both. And these valuable resources cannot be duplicated by the current affairs.

In retrospect, it does not matter if we are examining the Russian revolution or the Glorious revolution, we always benefits from understanding the trends that the history presented. And those trends cannot be observed in the age we are living since we cannot be fully objective to the outcome. Moreover, one of the reasons we observe the trends in history is to conclude and predict similar trends of the ongoing affairs. When Prince Henique set the first nautical college in Portugal, he may not predict how much this will contribute to make the then Portugal a super power in the 16th century instead of follow his interest of the ocean. Actually, graduates from the first college special for nautical upgraded compass and ships for sailing and finally contribute to the discovery the Cape of Good Hope and developed the new route from Europe to Asia. The route, as a privilege to Portugal, made it possible for the kingdom became the wealthiest country at that moment. Here, we can easily understand the importance of education. From this perspective, people could possibility predict a nation would not continue to develop without enough effort to perfect its education system while others not due to the policymakers' emphasize on education.

In addition, looking back to our past not merely provide us a chance to predict trend. It enables us to better understanding ourselves, via the search of morale or the dignity of a human. People may argue Adolf Hitler as an evil of the century that brought disasters to the Jews and the world and the Germen themselves as well. But never forget he was elected as a lawful leader of the Weimar Republic, via the democratic method we are proud of. At that moment, the world was struggling to end the Great Depression. People were in great poverty, and suddenly found that one person declared to lead them out of the mess. Hitler tried every means to bring German back to the top of world, even wars. But the Germen were still support him. For what? To satisfied their endless greed to wealth, even after ending the Depression. Now we have a close scrutiny of humanity, greed, one of the seven deadly sins the mankinds have. And we try to understand us better by the explanation of greed. Are we too greedy to start the Civil War, since the farmers in the south did not want to drop the right of keeping slaves? Are we too greedy to break the friendship with Indians after first settling, since we wanted their land and gold?

Fortunately, the human beings are not always with sins. We do have the virtue aspect. Love, as one of the most beautiful word some described, provide us with dignity and pride to be a mankind. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2006, governments of Cuba and Venezuela, both hostile to the US government, pledged to help and provided 1 million donations respectively. Sri Lanka, still not recovered from the Indian Ocean Tsunami, also contributed to rescue. Inside the nation, pop singers, rocker singers and hip-hop singers get together to hold concert to help. Here, we recognize the love, no matter who you are what you do, people love each other and pre for the peace of the whole world. We discover all these from looking back to the past.

In sum, albeit we are living in a new age and every day seems different from one another, there always exists something in our mind that never changes. Either the sins or the dignity of human help us to better understand ourselves. The happened will help to predict that would happen and suggest how should we respond. Looking back to the history makes all those possible.