Why history is important

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Today I got to go out to our local history museum. I love going out there and checking out the exhibits. Our local history museum used to be an insane asylum and later a poor farm. It's about 120 years old and it's really neat thinking about the history of it. As a kid, I wasn't really into history but as I've gotten older it's fascinating to me. I think about how different everything was and how much has changed and evolved over the years. When I stand somewhere I think about the people who were probably standing in that spot before me. When I walk into an old building I think about those that were there before me and what they might have been like. I think about everything that has happened before and everything that will happen after. When I look back at old pictures I think about how those people didn't realize that one day people would be looking at them thinking about and wondering who they were. They probably didn't think about the people who would look at them fifty to one hundred years later. No one really realizes how important history actually is. We learn so much from the past. We learn how to make things better. We wouldn't have computers had each generation not developed various parts of them. At one time a computer would take up an entire room and couldn't even do a quarter of what a cell phone can do now. We wouldn't have anything that we have now had someone else not helped create the idea. We wouldn't have evolved as people without the past knowledge of things. We also learn from others mistakes. It's an amazing concept really. Look at WWII and think about how much we learned about from that terrible experience. We learned that we never wanted anything like that to happen again. Not just with the Jewish people which was the worst of it but in the USA we sent the Japanese Americans to camps too. We didn't kill them but we forced them to sell their belongings, homes, and businesses and forced them into these tiny, dirty, overcrowded camps. We were not as bad as the Nazis but we still did a pretty horrible thing. Eleanore Roosevelt was against this thankfully and she was the one that brought it to the US's (and her husband's) attention that what they were doing wasn't right. The government apologized to the Japanese Americans and later even paid the surviving camp inhabitants a sum of money to attempt to try and compensate for their misdeeds, of course, no amount of money can undo the hurt that was caused but it was something. What we did was wrong and we learned from it at least to some degree just like we eventually learned slavery and segregation were wrong. We look back at the battles fought throughout history. We learn things from each and every historical event. We have evolved so much as humans and we still have a really long way to go. History is so important and we need to remember why it is our ancestors fought for the freedoms we take for granted today. At one time women and black people couldn't vote. At one time black people were slaves and the Irish Americans were treated like dirt. Fear often creates discrimination and it's a reoccurring theme throughout history. Whenever we view something as different from the way we know things we consider it a threat and it's something we haven't completely figured out how to solve because that's what's at the heart of racism, fear. If we could go back through history and really look at each event and get to the root of our problems we would be able to solve so many problems. History is important because not only did technology evolve but we as humans evolved when we learned that some things were morally wrong. No human should ever be treated as an animal or as less than they really are. Each and every president brought at least one good thing to the table even if it was a minor thing. Nixon actually did some amazing things in office but the second he tried to cover up Watergate all of that went down the drain. If you look back on each and every president they all offered up a few good things and they all did some bad things. My favorite president in history to date is FDR and he is the one that began and ended Japanese internment camps. He let fear motivate him into signing an order sending Japanese Americans there but he came to his senses and also ended them. We all need to look at history in a better light. As a kid I thought "why is learning about all of these dead people so important?" Now as an adult I know why. Each of those things and each one of those people brought something important to the table whether it was an invention or a moral conviction that we all need to learn from. Just my opinion though.