Why You Should Study History
It will make you wiser
Many people snoozed through their history classes growing up, and that’s a shame. The more I study it, the more I realize that history is not something boring but rather it’s profound, insightful, and incredibly useful.
Here are a few reasons why you should pick up a history book or two in the not so distant future:
It helps us understand why things are the way they are
The world is full of problems. But that’s nothing new — human history can be thought of as people moving from one problem to another, with some solved optimally and others not. In fact you could say that most of today’s problems are a direct function of many of the suboptimal solutions adopted by our forebears in the past.
If we want any chance of solving problems, especially hugely complex ones that affect us all, we need to understand their drivers. What drove the decisions that produced today’s issues? What was it about the overarching geopolitical or social environment that incentivized the people of yesterday to make the decisions that they did?
For example, to understand the divisiveness and social unrest of society today, it helps to first understand that unfortunately inequality has always been a part of human society. In…
