issue120 【^5.5分周末party8月组^】第一次作业

120. "So much is new and complex today that looking back for an understanding of the past provides little guidance for living in the present."
现代社会是如此的崭新和复杂以至于回首了解过去对于当代生活已经没有太大帮助了。
The speaker claims that looking back for an understanding of past provides little guidance for living in the present, which seems to be tempting upon the first impression because it is so much new and complex today. However, the speaker overlooks the good function and advantage of learning history. In my view, on the base of history, we should keep pace with time to find more new approaches to the problems, while, history also taught us lot involved the knowledge and lessons of our ancestors.

Admittedly, the speaker’s assertion that understanding the past possesses little direction for living in the present has its merit on some situations of the rapidly developing technology and society. Confronted more and more information and upgrading knowledge on new subjects, a large amount of problems we have never met before appeared alongside, which rendered us in a siftless condition as we cannot borrow ideas from our forefathers. Therefore, the new era require us to hone the creative ability----to explore new methods to solve the problems we met today. As an illustration, with the extensive using of the Internet and computer technology, increasingly cyber crimes turned up. Effective as the original criminal law is, it is not applicable for the new style crime. Thus, new legislations relative to the cyber crimes are issued by the government and the legislature.

Though, under some situations we need look forward without pay much attention to history, on no account should we conclude that it is useless to understand the past in such modern time. Actually, the knowledge and experience accumulated from the history usually is taken as the base of the modern development. “If I can see a bit further than some others, it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants,” said Newton, the famous physician and mathematician, who realized this point hundreds year ago. Without his law of gravitation as the base, the following scientist may not invent the manmade satellite in such short period. Without the circumnavigation of both Magellan and Columbus, nobody can figure out when people would learn the whole world, let alone the globalization. Thus, it is hardly too much to say all of the new information and knowledge we acquired today is based on the knowledge of prior period.

Besides what I have mentioned above, I tend to concede that it is also the history that teaches us the lessons and hints us not to commit the same mistakes again. Actually, some situations we are now in, the things happened today are the recurrence of historical events and patterns. History will replay itself in a certain span. Thus, to study history better may assist us to avoid committing the same mistakes we have ever done. To support this, we have to acknowledge that it is due to the lessons we learned from the two World Wars that people in all of the countries now can live in harmony in spite of the differences on every aspect such as ideology, culture and custom still existing. People may deal with these problems and achieve a agreement through negotiation and peaceful means instead of military might.

To summarize, I concede that we are live in a new and complex society which demand us to use the latest information and knowledge to solve the problems effectively. Nonetheless, to some extant, the speaker’s claim underrates the significance of history study which is of importance in promoting the construction of knowledge and in warning the descendants not to repeat the mistakes committed by our ancestors. In the final analysis, the optimal approach, in my view, is that study the essence what we can abstract from the history meanwhile cultivate the creative ability against such new and complex society.