Nowadays everybody is constantly focusing on the future: people think about new technologies, inventions, and strategies to develop. However, in doing so, paramount historical events are often erased by our minds to make room for our ambitions. In this essay we will discuss the problems of forgetting history and how to solve them.
Forgetting the past has a terrible outcome on people’s behaviour and relationships. When someone forgets the past, they forget the mistakes that were made that the human species should have learned from. Therefore, people overestimate themselves believing their power to be limitless and themselves to be invincible. This would result in people making terrible mistakes that in the past have created disastrous consequences, such as war, genocides and murders.
The best solution would be to make people become passionate about history, to make them consider it crucial for the development and personal growth, learning from actions in the past. A great example of how forgetting history influences our actions is represented by Hitler’s actions. He ordered to attack Russia, where thousands of German soldiers died because of the cold and the lack of food, while the Russian population was strategically retreating. This was the first crucial German defeat that caused Germany to lose the war. Centuries before, the same mistake was made by Napoleon of France, who tried to invade Russia, only resulting in thousands of dead soldiers: if Hitler had remembered that terrible mistake, he wouldn’t have taken the risk of invading Russia.
Another solution for the problem of forgetting history would be to think critically, to listen to different opinions and then make an opinion of our own by deepening our knowledge, surfing on the internet, and educating ourselves. For instance, the current political situation in Italy needs to be taken in consideration. A few weeks ago, the Italian population had to vote to elect senators and parliamentarians, hence the prime minister too. Most people voted for the right, represented by a group of four conservative parties, while only a minority for the left. However, a few years ago one of those conservative parties called “Lega nord” ( which means “the group of the north”) only thought about the interests in the north of Italy, calling people from the south dirty and stinky. Nowadays the leaders of those parties don’t speak about this anymore, otherwise they would drastically lose votes: not remembering what the right used to call the south of Italy, people from the south still voted for them.
In conclusion, knowing history lets us hold an enormous power only we can decide how to use. We can’t make the same horrible mistakes of the past and we can’t be manipulated by other people because we wouldn’t have poor knowledge. Knowing history makes us responsible, free citizens and human beings.
Sara Stornelli - classe 5^AL Liceo Linguistico "Bianchi Dottula" Bari
