ISSUE103

TOPIC: ISSUE103 - "The study of history has value only to the extent that it is relevant to our daily lives."
WORDS: 561 TIME: 01:30:16 DATE: 2008-3-13 15:11:47

The speaker asserts that people ought to research history related to our daily lives, otherwise research is meaningless. In my view, with respect to some realms, especially in the ancient literatures, people may not gain valuable ideals that are useful for current lives; with respect to certain other areas, however, great experiences summarized by our ancestors indeed benefit for today's lives. Therefore, I tend to agree with the speaker in some realms; but in specific fields I do not.

In contemporary, rapid change of modern technology and science has made the historical events and experiences much less valuable than they did in their times. This is especially true in literatures and sciences. For example, the oracle characters, one of Chinese out-line literature, does not contribute to the development of our economy today. People have not discovered any article that is written in oracle characters, and masses cannot benefit from oracle. The same things happen in sciences. In fact, our ancestors made a lot of mistakes during their exploring physical, chemistry and so on. For example, the earth was once considered as one constitute of only five elements--gold, wood, water, fire and clay in the history of China, which has already been proven to be false conclusions. In short, the study of historical literature and physics is of no value for contemporary society.

By contrast, procedures of history development can help people today abstract certain developing rules that hold through thousands of years in human history. If experts put emphasis on political figures, what they did and the consequences of what these political figures did, multitude surely will gain abundant knowledge about human beings. Consider, for example, Geliang Zhu, a prominent military counselor in Chinese history, helped his master, Liu, win a myriad of battles under tough circumstances. Therefore Liu appreciated Zhu and conformed to what Zhu said. But everything changed after Shan, Liu's older son, took the place of his father after Liu died. Shan was a man of ego and fired Ge. Without Ge's advices, Shan failed to defend his country. As a result, his country was occupied by another country's king. Consequently, people can learn how to manage a country or a corporation from Shan's experiences.

Furthermore, in the areas of environment, people must pay enough attention to historical events occurred in the most recent century. Wood, oil as well as gas have been largely utilized since the start of last century, the 1920s. However, at that time people didn't obey the law of natural and engendered innumerous huge damages to our natural environment, and nature began to revenge in the 1950s. Today, water in many districts of the world are no longer suitable for drinking; atmosphere is filled with harmful gas around chemical factories; and innumerous acres of forest disappear in less than one-quarter century. People approach to understanding destructive outcomes and they attempt to research historical development of nature in time. Fortunately, historical experiences help us. People today actively engage in protecting water, reducing consumption of forest, and carefully making tools of other finite resources.

In sum, certain historical events, such as political figures and environment cases, are valuable for today's research; while in some other areas, especially ancient literature, the masses need not to pay too much attention to. In the final analysis, then, I fundamentally insist that the study of history should be selective.