History Is A Survival Tool
Imagine living in a tribal society in prehistoric times, hunting for food and resources with the lads, when your mate Australopithecus finds some berries. Australopithecus eats the berries, eventually complains of stomach pains, and shortly after rolls over dead, foaming at the mouth. The hunting party unanimously agrees that those berries shouldn’t be eaten, and you proceed to write down your findings and share them with the rest of your tribe.
Congratulations! You just made history and some poor idiot had to die for it. Here’s to hoping that this knowledge won’t be forgotten 10 generations later to prevent some other unfortunate soul’s untimely demise.
This is why history matters; it’s essential for survival.
The struggles of the human race have been chronicled, in more or less detail, for some 4,000 years. If we attempt to study similar periods of time from multiple countries, we can discover the same patterns repeated under widely different climates, cultures and religions.
Many say that the culmination of history is that men never learn from history, which is a sweeping generalization by Cliff Note historians, but an accurate one nonetheless. Personally, I blame the politicization of history dominated by emotion and the outright boycott of certain periods of history by describing them as “boring”.
The patterns of civilizations in history are as follows: The Rise, which is marked by conquest, commerce, affluence and intellect, and The Fall or Decadence, which is marked by defensiveness, pessimism, materialism, frivolity, negative birth rates, an influx of foreigners, the welfare state and a weakening of religion. Decadence is due to a long period of wealth and power, selfishness and the lost sense of duty.
One may view this cycle as: bad times create hard men, hard men create good times, good times create weak men and weak men create bad times. While each civilization met their end in different ways, the histories of great states are amazingly similar, regardless of time, origin or location. One may argue that the study of history is the epic quest to break the pattern of civilizations and decode the societies, economics, religions, militaries and politics which defines modern international relations.
History well told is beautiful. History being used as art and entertainment serves a real purpose. It’s a collection of stories to inspire us and connect us to our ancestors that have shaped our identity. Because without identity, what are we?
