History ... whats the point?

History to many brings back memories of a much dreaded subject at school. How they had to learn an endless number of dates, names of people and event gone by.. What's the point?

Last night i was watching the movie 'Gandhi' an historial account of the great man and his works. It reminded me of how we sometimes are so engrossed in getting to the future that we forget the all important past, a treasure of insights. So why is the past so important?

What makes history interesting (and very important) is not 'when' it happened (1800 or 1850 makes no a difference when we are in 2008) but 'WHY' it happened. 'Who' was the actual doer is far less significant then 'HOW' it was done. Take for example the partition in 1947 the most important parts of this event is not when or who but how it was excuted, how so many lifes were lost and most importantly why it ended up being one of the bloodiest mass migrations in history. Similary if we ask these questions of the great wars we come to gain many insights into human behaviour.If we don't acknowledge the mess that was created how will we work towards ensuring that the mess is never recreated. Looking at the good and the bad leaders in history we better understand what sort of leadership is effective and what type of leadership needs caution. If we don't understand how Hitler came to be, how can we recognise another one in the making.

Just as from our personal life we have successes and mistakes and we learn many lessons from these. Similarly we have many lessons to learn from humanity's successes and failures. For the more scientifically inclined, history is like the results of a great many experiments carried out over time, results which should not be ignored.

Although we all have the previledge of shaping the future we also have the responsibility of learning from the past because they say 'History has a way of repeating itself'.