The Books of History and the Rivers Of Time
Saint Augustine said, “The world is a book, and those who do not travel only read a page.” The roman philosopher, Cicero, also said, “Not to know what took place before you were born is to forever remain a child.” If one was to examine the truth behind both of these statements, it would be easy to conclude that history is also like a book; if you only look into what is around you, if you only read the cover, you will never able table to know what time has hidden between its pages. You will never know what went into making the pages of our past.
Will and Ariel Durant also approached time with a metaphor. They consider it to be a river that consists of the blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and historic endeavors, as for the main flow of the river. The banks of the river contain everyday life and the people partaking in everyday actions. Furthermore, the actions that the kings, nobles, rich, and powerful shape the actions of everyday life for the common people in the past; just as a river will shape itself in the past and continue to do so in this present day. We, the common people, are still shaped, manipulated, and controlled by those who are powerful in our society.
It is easy to look at a book but not read its contents. It is easy to look at the flow or a river and forget how it came to be that way. It is easy to brush off history as just the past and to look at is as an event that will not help our future. It takes more effort to absorb the knowledge for which the book was created; it takes more thought to consider why the river turns at some points and is still at others, and despite the difficulty in understanding our past it will always be beneficial for our future.
Whether time and history repeats itself, or it is simply human habit to look for patterns where they do not exist, past errors made by both the mass of the river and the inhabitants of its banks are bound to resemble errors made in our modern time. Examples of this are everywhere: those who do not adapt well do not survive, such as the dinosaurs; empires may become too strong and collapse, such as the Roman Empire; and environments may be exploited, leading to the downfall of groups of people, such as the Rapanui of Easter Island. By examining the mistakes of our predecessors we can assess new situations with a better outlook than we could if we were to be ignorant of the past that haunts us.
Perhaps just as important, if not even more important than looking at mistakes and failure of the past, is to look at the successes and victories of those who flourished. It is easy to see the error in a peoples’ actions, but to understand how they were able to be so powerful up until that point allows us to use that knowledge to our advantage. Consider George Orwell’s novel, 1984. In his story, the government that is in power has considered what has gone wrong in the past for the leaders and what has worked for them. They utilize both aspects of success and failure, and create what appears to be a perfect government for the upper class.
To utilize history as the government does in this novel, to further expand the importance of history, one must consider not just the knowledge applicable to our civilization, but the actions of individuals. Even though the center of the river may act as one mass, it is compiled of individuals just as the banks of the river are. Philosophers, intellectuals, scholars, and librarians, may collect vast amounts of knowledge by their own ability and leave it hidden away for historians of our time to stumble upon. Artists of every craft may have left behind their pictures, sheet music, and statues, in private collections that were sealed up to be found in the future. The every day laborer and common housewife may even have left their tools behind to be dug up. None of these discoveries may enhance our lives directly, but it gives us a window into the past. Even though the objects we find may be artistic or useless, humans are curious, and in curiosity we find the drive and purpose of history.
Personally, I find the purpose of studying history to be much more than just a look into the past so that our future may be better. I know events and errors are going to occur no matter what we do, for the mistakes that were made in the past may be made now and we can observe them without looking into the past. The observance of the failures that previous generations may have had may not be necessary to our future, even though it may help. I see the purpose of history, for me, to be in curiosity. I find the events of the past to be interesting and I want to learn about them for the sake of learning. I have no desire to learn about them so I am able to stop our civilization from collapsing, nor the desire to go out to a dig site and look into what I may find buried away in the ground. My history intake revolves around the History Channel, the occasional website I may find myself on and classes in school.
Everyone has a different interpretation regarding what they think history is. To some it is boring; to others it is all they may spend their time looking into. To most, their interest will be a happy medium between these two. Everyone could live without knowledge of history, but I’m sure it is within human nature to be curious of what is to come; but you cannot observe the future. You can observe the past, and that is the best we can get to satisfy our curiosity.
History is the study of the past, in particular the study of the past revolving around humans. Before humans, there was no history, for history is a hu8manh concept. Events may have taken place before humans, but they may not concern us as much as the events that have taken place during our existence. History is the analysis of what we find, the piecing together of the information, and the current accepted interpretation of that information. It is dynamic, in depth, and shows us how the past has developed. It is interesting, intriguing, and as long as it is the study of the past it is forever growing.
My Comparative Civilizations class had an assignment, we had to write an essay regarding history, the value of history, what we think of it, and I'm sure a few other points that follow that idea that I forgot about. We were told that the issue of formatting was not very important, so I put mine in a blog style. I initially wrote it on here, Blogger, saved it as a draft so I could work on it at home. From there, once it was done, I fixed it up on Microsoft Word, had some friends edit, and typed it up again. A printed version was handed in one day early and a few hours later flex block has occurred (yes, this is more flex block blogging; which is going to end up being filler I'm sure). After copying and pasting the essay into blogger again, putting it over the draft I had saved, I decided to add some details about it and now I'm working on figuring out how to get rid of the MS formatting. The 'erase formatting' button is failing me. I hope this doesn't post with a double spacing, it will be far too space inefficient.
Efficiency; that's been the theme of my life recently. Perhaps not life, just several actions within it. I've been spending a lot of time playing DDR, Minecraft, and doing school work. Once you get good at DDR a lot of being good at it is related to movement efficiency, but you can just force your way into it. Fluid motion is great; it stops you from falling. As for minecraft, I've found myself doing a fair amount of calculation, testing to find out the fastest way to create walls (which is laying them two at a time, vertically. Put two down, take a step, put two more down), and in several of the large structures I've been making have needed some thinking through before building.
By digging out a 20x8x20 (x, y, z) area, I will be digging out 3200 pieces of stone. 3200 pieces of stone dived by 128 per cobblestone pick means I'll need a little bit less than 13 picks (I think). Everything being in convent cube shapes is great.
I've experimented with a few methods of speedcubbing that I usually don't use and found them to be quite useful at times but on the most part I'm sticking to my Fredrick's method.
Schoolwork, I have a fair amount of it. I've been getting it all done in less time than I would get my work done last semester. It's worked out well. I've also had a free block, something that I did not have last semester, and it's been great for getting work done. I've especially enjoyed having it with Comparative Civilizations, which sometimes brings me to the library where I do my work. When the bell goes I get to stay in the same place I'm in, uninterrupted.
Filler is terrible, this formatting is annoying. I hope it doesn't stick.
Bugworlds *^
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