The Importance of Understanding History

Masayuki Sato
 
It is human beings that make history. Both good and bad, it is human beings that make history. Also, it is human beings that make history from now on. That is to say, we human have a possibility to develop some technology more and also bring on wars.
 
In history, human beings made great efforts to create new systems, machines or formulas etc. Einstein established the theory of relativity and Newton created the law of universal gravitation. Also human beings put these things to practical use and developed these. Because of that, we can pass our days comfortably. But we mustn’t be satisfied only in this situation. We must take one step further for the future. To do this, it is important to understand and learn history. Some people may think that I can’t find a new theory or I can’t create new products. But our mission is not only that. Each person has an own role individually. You learn history firstly then you should think about how you will put it to good use.

On the other hand, human beings have also set off catastrophic events in the past. In my point of view, it seems that most of the important historical events in the past were catastrophic, more than good ones: The massacre of Jews, the Nanking Massacre, World Wars, the dropping of the atomic bombs, the Iran-Iraq War… What do we learn from these? We must not repeat like these histories and will never bring on the tragic events. By understanding history, we should bring the balefulness of the wars down for the next generation to make the world peaceful then let them think about the importance of our life or how human beings make a peaceful world from now on.
 
It is very important to understand and learn from history. This is the first step to think about peace or our future. And then, we must tell posterity the story that human beings have gathered the threads of so far in order to make a peaceful world and not repeat harrowing history.