We Need to Know History, Especially Now
- sciart0
- Sep 6
- 1 min read
Why does history matter?
“History shows us how to behave,”
McCullough begins.
“History teaches, reinforces what we believe in, what we stand for, and what we ought to be willing to stand up for.”
You can’t be dreamy about the past and say, “It was nice then.”
It was never nice, it was made by human beings.
You can’t say, “People were better then.” They weren’t.
But in even the recent past the allowable boundaries of public behavior were firmer, and the expectations we held for our leaders higher.
And their public behavior (not private, or not necessarily private) was often preferable to the public behavior we see today.
So you don’t want to live in the past, but you do want to bring the best of the past into the present.