Importance of the Past

Great moments are achieved through great opportunity. From those opportunites that have been exploited, we have made goals in life's roadway acheivable. History is not just a torture chamber of dates and names that we lived through school with. It is a rule book of past lessons learned in defeats and in victories. A lot of our life questions are about things that have already been practiced by our ancestors. Yet we find constant turmoil in the fact that we cannot seem to find the answer to life's questions when we do know that we are not the first ones to experience these questions. My point really is to drive home the part history plays in our everyday lives today. In 1914 a certain group of leaders from several Europeon countries met to discuss social and political issues. There were representaives from Germany, Italy, France, England, and a delegation from the Austrian Hungarian Empire as well. They all sat down to discuss and converse, to the betterment of the Europeon nations. One thing they could not agree on was seeing the matter from the others point of view, resulting in prideful greed. The result of this conference was not a happy one, these leaders ended up facing each other on two other occasions. The first being a meeting on several diffrent battle fields in France, and the other being in the surrender of Germany and the Austiran Hungarian Empire. This conference is laid out in a wildly acclaimed book entitled "The Guns of August". WWI was kindled by this conference of confusion and distrust that was seen across the desks of these noblemen. From this we see that confusion in our world today can be taken to such extremes that a world war can be the culmination of it. A study of our past can bring about certain advantages in our day and time. Do we still negotiate with the point of a gun? Well that's hard to answer, at times. We, the United States, do not point our gun at England and use them like a puppet, as some say we do. We have learned through history that it is more sufficient to talk things out instead of assuming and firing. This may seem hardly like an in depth look at why history is important; yet I think that history has taught me to teach things on a basic level and build the students thoughts on your subject before throwing them into something that would be way over there heads. You may think that the world is a mess, and going down and never rising again. As that may be the case, I'm just glad that we do not have the mindset of the 16th century and be in possesion of nuclear war heads. Yes! Several lessons, but all I need is one small one to make a point.