Nourishing the Flower: How the Study of World History Paves the Way for an Innovative Future
The study of world history has set humans ahead for an anticipating future. Parallel to how evolution is mapped in science, historical events allow us to create a timeline of past events which can be analyzed to see what happened, what went wrong, and why it happened. Certain individuals or groups can go as far as utilizing our society and analysis of past historical events to predict what might be expected of the future. Though, compared to the gruesome events that still haunt certain individuals today, it might seem as though the present is the best era yet. Perhaps we are living in a utopia when such gruesome events are taken into account. The answer depends on how we interpret the past and present. Analyzing the past allows for us, in the present, to make changes to our current society and world in which we live, to create a flourishing and better world for future generations.
There are many significant historical events that humans underwent, each event holding a past struggle that has had a significant impact on human history. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were disparate but both significant events in history which, without their occurrence, humans would not be striving the way we would be today.
The 1960s was a very monumental decade, bountiful with significant events that remain imprinted in history books today. One particular event that stood out was the Cuban Missile Crisis which happened in 1962. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff over the installations of nuclear missiles on Cuba. On October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy announced his decision to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and make it clear to the Soviets that America was prepared to use their military force if posed to do so to neutralize the threat to national security. Many people feared that the world was going to break out in a nuclear war. Fortunately, the United States and Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev were able to make a compromise to avoid war. Nikita Krushchev agreed to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the United States to promise not to attack Cuba. From this monumental event, a moral that humans can take away is that no matter the situation, in a state of conflict there should be compromise instead of turning to violence. As both the US and Soviet leaders were keen to compromise, they were able to avoid a disastrous nuclear war.
In the same decade, African Americans were treated unjustly as the Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. As any pressing minority group would, African Americans organized a movement in an effort to end racial discrimination and gain equal rights under the law. This movement is widely known as the civil rights movement which occurred from 1954 to 1968. One of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This act was signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, and ended segregation in public areas and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion, color, or national origin, leading to greater social and economic mobility for those minority groups. Not only does this act disclose that all groups must be treated equally, but it still has relevance today. The study of racism in the 1900s has shown humans that racism will never be abolished. Although matters have become much more under control than in the 1900s, educational disparities still exist for African Americans students to this day. In June 2016, the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights revealed that Black K-12 students are 3.8 times more likely to receive suspensions as compared to white students in the same school and grade. Society can learn from the civil rights movement and the civil rights act, to discern the goal that previous generations attempted to achieve and take on our own roles to accomplish racial equality, from which then as a more united society we will be able to progress in this world at a much rapid pace.
The occurrence of these events is ultimately the water to help the flower bloom and hope for future generations. Society can be represented as a single flower, not yet fully bloomed, but unlike an actual flower, this flower will never fully bloom. It will just get bigger and more beautiful with the help of time. This beautiful, blooming flower will get some cuts and scratches as it grows, but the flower is able to fix itself. Sometimes, a few pebbles might be in the water and fall onto the flower, scraping the beautiful once-pristine pedals. All those historical, gruesome, yet significant events are those tiny pebbles that fall upon us, the flower. But we grow–we grow and fix ourselves, not letting those pebbles get the best of us. All those scars and cuts from the pebbles in the past only make the flower stronger, setting up a better world for future generations. The study of world history shouldn’t only affect the understanding of the world to a single individual because the knowledge of one person is in most cases left unheard of. Analyzing the past allows humans to comprehend the mistake once made and learn to never repeat it again. Hence, the study of world history should affect the understanding of the world to all humans, and together we will be able to fix our flowers, nourish our roots, and bloom forward for the generations to come.
