History Is Not A Series Of Events

History is happening all around us, whether it is affecting us positively or negatively. History is an occurrence of events that have made an impact so big that we emphasize them today. From the Sumerians, to the latest recorded history, we are creating history within. History is happening every day, but it is up to us the retreat back the occurrences of the past life. It is because of history that we function the way we do. For example, through the 15th century, occurrences happened, for example the diversity of people seen throughout the new world. You’ll see that conflict and tension led to experiences with self-government and that the questioning of authority of the church led to diverse religions. Everything that happened in the past has led us to have the history we do today.

In reading a Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich you realize that history seems so much less complicated when you are the one standing back and reflecting on the past. You realize how easy it is to often forget that every single new idea, religion and war was a struggle that lasted generations upon generations. History is more than just a page or a story, its our account of the world. That goes to show how short life and history is, you realize that history is always repeating, war after war, peace then war. There are good and bad periods in history and its up to us to learn from them. In a way history is much like a human being it goes through stages, learns about life, and has inner struggles or wars about their ideas and their beliefs.

What is history? We look at these past civilizations, making assumptions and criticisms about their ways of life as if we know exactly what they were thinking. In reality, we have no idea how they justified the actions that we judge. Soon we will be the past and we will be looked upon from future civilizations that attempt to understand our cultures. This thought can be quite overwhelming when one thinks how we will be viewed. In Chuck Klosterman’s novel “But what if we’re Wrong,” he delves into the idea of what past cultures would think of our views towards them as well as future generations analyses of us. We tend to make vague assumptions of their actions rarely considering their thoughts during the time. Many of their actions were based on the time they lived in and the resources available to them, not always having a choice towards joining different culture norms. Before we judge these past civilizations we must first consider what people in the future will think of our current society.

History is something that we all have knowledge of. It may be family history, or even your own but we all know of an experience that happened in the past. These experiences make us who we are, and they determine how we think. Not only that but they determine our emotions towards certain topics. Through characters in the book, "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, " written by Jamie Ford, we learn that American identity is based on ones history and if we want America to become a stronger more united place everyone’s history must be accepted.

James Baldwin once said: “History is not the past. History is the present. We carry our history with us. To think otherwise is criminal”. This quote stated by James Baldwin perfectly summarizes the many problems that people are acquainted within society. Throughout history, people are bunched up into groups where they are labeled certain things which carries on into today’s world. People are not viewed as individuals with the certain choice making abilities but rather subjected to being grouped by irrelevant factors into certain groups. By doing this, other people are able to take advantage of these people that are classified into groups by exploiting them for their own benefit. This is the unfortunate system which history has allowed to

The study of history and the teaching of history has come under intense public debate in the United States in the last few decades. The “culture-wars” began with the call to add more works by non-Caucasians and women and has bled into the study of history. Not only in the study of history or literature, this debate has spread into American culture like wildfire.

It has been said that history is bound to repeat itself, some might say it is because the human mind thinks alike in more ways than one. This is proven in many ways including the properties and function processes of a variety of communities. Take a look at today’s society, people are ranked on social class based upon their source of income and how they are presented. They are continuously told the rule book for life by those who hold high authority and we feed off of money. We are willing to throw away our principles we vowed to stand by to earn another dime to our salary. 4,000 years ago these same problems arose in some of the earliest civilizations known to man. In Mesopotamia civilians had to deal

Throughout time, history has been recorded from the perspective of the victors. It is this bias within the archives that shape the views and motives of the groups involved. As a result of this influence the general way of thinking, and recollection of historical events has been altered to a certain degree to conform to the conqueror’s ideals. Society turns a blind eye to the horrors of the past, preferring to plead ignorance than to face the reality of the cruelty humans are capable of. There are parts in history that conversely cannot be ignored, such as the genocide in Rwanda, 9-11, Terror in Paris and the most historical, the holocaust in World War II, where the true extent of human vindictiveness came to light. In spite

To know the past is to know the future. In his essay Knowing History and Knowing Who We Are, David McCullough argues about the importance of studying and teaching history. In his essay, he explains that there are three main points about history: character and its effect upon destiny, our failure of teaching the future generation, and the importance of learning and listening to history. David McCullough strongly advocates that audience should start to listen to and teach about the past in order to learn about the way a person’s character can affect their destiny.

history though is that we can learn from our mistakes, and make sure that nothing like this ever

The article “History Still Matters” by Bill Moyers expresses some important concerns in our societies over the loss of interest in history. Throughout the article Moyers explains the loss of interest but also shows the reader the subject is crucial for societies to progress. He uses deeper meanings to further understand the importance of history as well as expressing the reasons he thinks cultures have lost interest past events. The author also mentions that although people find no relations to history in today’s world, there are conflicts that can resemble current problems. It is also imperative to realize history has assembled our concurrent world. For those reasons we can have our own outlook and interpretations of history to further understand the progression and stage we are currently in.

Have you ever heard the saying “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” and “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”? These quotes come from George Santayana and George Bernard Shaw, these men tell how it’s common for people to repeat past mistakes. However, if people learn to look back and understand history, it’s harder to replicate disastrous actions. History is full of wars and brutish words, yet the source of all these problems come from a single issue: power. Leaders seek power in every crevice they can find. In the book, “Animal Farm” by George Orwell, Napoleon is a cruel dictator who successfully takes over a farm after running off its competitors. Major, an old pig, told the farm of a new way of living. However, after he died, Napoleon steadily took over the farm. Therefore, taking the time to understand history’s past and mistakes can be an effective weapon against repeating the same mistakes. Failure to learn outcomes in a repetition of history, as Napoleon proves, as shown in today’s life, learning from history helps resolve futures issues, and only suffering comes from problematic actions of the past.

Cliché as it may be, the phrase, "history always repeats itself" is more or less a universal truth. Even if the world today looks and feels different from the world our parents and grandparents grew up in, basic issues and societal foundations remain the same.

Now and days every person must take at least two years of history in order to pass high school. Many people, including myself, ask the question,“Why must we take history?” Well the answer many of us get is, “ So that history does not repeat itself.” The real question of the matter is, Does history repeat itself? History has repeated itself over and over again. An example of this would be the genocide that occurred in the Ottoman empire in 1915, nearly 88 years later another genocide has occurred in Darfur in 2003. These two events are both similar and different in ways, but none-the-less are proof that history does in deed repeat itself.

It was a common saying of the past that the history of a conflict was told by the victors. That was true then, the losers of the conflict had to rebuild after their defeat and the winners could share their side of the story, twisting it so it would seem that they did no harm and the losers deserved defeat because they were the villains. This is not true today. With the wealth of information at one’s finger tips and the available research opportunities the stories can be untangled and both sides of the story can be told. However, some have held strong to the truths that their side proclaimed and refuse to admit that their victory was tarnished by lies, deceits, and omissions. This very idea is what shaped how