V 97

V 97: THE ONLY THING WE LEARN FROM HISTORY IS THAT WE LEARN NOTHING FROM HISTORY. History is the scientific study of all things that happened in the past, especially concerning the political, social or economic evolution of a nation in time. History, under the common definition can tell us what happened, but not why or how that is important to us today. First of all, mankind’s history has always had a dark side, the one of wars, crimes and cruelties. The First World War was said to be the ‘’war to end all wars’’. But not later than 20 years Europe engaged into a yet much bloodier, more devastating conflict, the Second World War. Albert Einstein one said: ‘’As long as people live, wars will still exist.’’ Second of all, nowadays the medieval Crusades have evolved into what is called terrorism. The model of an evil despot who must be removed was defined by figures such as Hitler is still carried in people’s mind. Rather than evaluating its modern problems from a new perspective, Humanity prefers to look back at the past and comes up with the same solutions from the past. Third of all, although we live in an era where we can contact a person within a few seconds, or travel across the ocean in few hours, most of the people live in conditions of incredible poverty, hunger, malnutrition and disease. The others seem to shelter themselves in their own bubble and pretend there is no such thing. If however, we believe that what we are is to a great extent made up from our past memories need not prevent us from according it a very high value. Finally, history is the ultimate moral lesson. The morals of history are not written by an author with a good imagination. They are brought about by real life-and-death decisions. History is philosophy taught by example. It shows us the consequences of man’s actions at a certain time.