It is Important to have Knowledge of History Essay -- Patricia Nelson

It is Important to have Knowledge of History Though the past may bring "a revival and restoration of the misery"(Limerick 473), I believe it is necessary to know and study our past. Through this essay I shall explain how knowledge of the past helps improve the quality of future output, satisfy our human thirst for knowledge, and understand certain polices and regulations.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Even in our everyday life we can see how past knowledge helps to improve the future's outcome. Whether it is improvement of policies, electronics or automobiles improvement is always occurring. The computer is one such item which has come a long way. It would taking up entire rooms, run very slowly, and create tremendous amounts of heat. As improvement began they became smaller, faster and more energy efficient. Today they are very small, and run at tremendously high speeds while producing very little heat. Each improvement in the computers history could not have been made without knowledge of its predecessor's blueprints. Without this knowledge improvement would be impossible, always building the same exact computers with the same problems and never realizing it could have been built in a different way perhaps with better materials or a different more efficient computer language.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In the same way as knowledge of the past helps to improve computers, it also improves the quality of life for mankind. Knowledge of our past helps us to see how humans react and deal with situations. this allows us to take preventative measures. There was a time when mankind was always at war with each other. Everyone was fighting to take each others land, food, and technology. Since then the United Nations have been created to prevent such types of pointless wars and now there are police which enforce the law and a government in which power lies in the people. There have been many bad times for humans in all parts of the world throughout history. There have been big and small wars with huge death tolls, small battles, famines, depressions, slavery and countless others events which could have been prevented if we had known what the outcome would be. Just as a person learns from their mistakes, knowledge of our history helps us to learn from our mistakes giving us insight into the fut ure. Many events that have happened in our past no longer plague the world today. Slavery used to be prevalent ... ...n that long that blacks have been able to educate themselves without the obstacle of segregation or harassment, though the lack of money still remains amongst many blacks. When faced with this knowledge of the black Americans past Caucasians can come to see how opportunities they have always had and maybe taken for granted were never given to Blacks. This allows acceptance of such biased policies such as affirmative action. In the past wars would have started over such a policy, but history helps us to understand there reasons for being and allow them. Though our history may bring back horrible memories of the ?grimmest dimensions of human nature? (Limerick 472), it is necessary to have a good historical background. History gives us the ability to improve future outputs, satisfy our unending need for knowledge, and understand how many policies and regulations have come to be. Without history mankind would be very primitive and ununified. Our complete molding of the world today is almost completely dependent on the fact that we study our history. Without history present day humans would be nothing more than cavemen. Source Cited Patricia Nelson Limerick, Haunted America.