Saving My Revised GRE Issue GRE Issue(Manuscript under Review) Copy Right 2012 by James Jiang.

g. All Rights Reserved Authorized and printed at Toronto, Canada, June 2012

Supplementary Ref

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About History

? word history carries two The meanings in common parlance. It refers both to what actually happened in the past and to the representation of that past in the work of historians. Contemporary society is sometimes portrayed as dominated by the experience of change. The break-neck speed of technological innovation, the erosion of traditional values and loyalties, the fickleness of electorates, and the instability of international relations are all from time to time cited as evidence that we live in a world radically different from the past, in which a sense of history and the lessons which can be drawn from is are dispensable. This is a superficial assessment to say to least. In all spheres of life, from personal relationships to political judgments, we constantly interpret our experience in time perspective, whether we are conscious of it or not. The mere fact of living alongside people older than ourselves makes us conscious of the past. Our sense of personal identity demands roots in the past which are sought in the first instance in genealogy and family history. We know that we cannot understand a situation in life without some perception or where it fits into a continuing process or whether it has happened before. To assert the indispensability of history is only another way of saying that what holds good for us as individuals applies with equal force to ourselves as members of society. History is collective memory, the storehouse of experience through which people develop a sense of their social identity and their future prospects. People who profess to ignore history are nevertheless compelled to make historical assumptions at every turn.

Clearly, history has a social role. Society requires a usable past, and different conceptions of the social order produce rival histories. Many historians have been proud to enlist on one side or another, believing that they have a social responsibility to promote this or that group identity, or to reinforce the authority of the state. Human beings strive to learn from their mistakes and successes in their collective life just as they do in everyday individual experience. Some people argue that history is simply something to be manipulated in support of an ideology. Anyhow, history does confer knowledge and people could learn from history. People have turned, and still turn to history for two types of guidance: for lessons on how to act in situations which have occurred before, and for a broader intimation of where they stand in the flow of time and thus of what may lie in future. Our political judgments are permeated by a sense of the past, whether we are deciding between the competing claims of political parties or assessing the feasibility of particular policies. We are all naturally curious about how our society came to be the way it is, and we all entertain some explanation on the subject, however half-baked and ill-founded it may be. The pace of contemporary change does not render the past irrelevant; it merely shifts the perspective from which we weight its influence and interpret its lessons. Racial conflict in modern British society is due not only to unequal access to employment and housing here and now, but to the legacy of plantation slavery and colonial rule which moulds racial attitudes, both black and white. Assessments of what can be done to rescue the ailing British economy depend on interpretations of how

Saving My Revised GRE Issue GRE Issue(Manuscript under Review) Copy Right 2012 by James Jiang. All Rights Reserved Authorized and printed at Toronto, Canada, June 2012

and why it has reached its present condition. Western strategies for dealing with the Soviet Union were based on a reading of Soviet objectives and policies since 1945, and often considerably earlier. These examples could be extended indefinitely. The effort to recapture the essence of every epoch in the past alerts us to the sheer variety of human mentality and achievement, and thus to something of the range of possibilities at our disposal now. History, after all, offers insights into a very wide range of human mentalities. History is also, of course, the record of human achievement, an inventory of assets whose value may be realized by later generations. This is a familiar idea in the creative arts. The work of painters and sculptors is periodically enriched by contact with the styles of the past; since the Renaissance if not earlier, Western art has been marked by a pronounced tendency to feed on its own history. More proudly, historical knowledge serves as a reminder that there is usually more than one way of interpreting a predicament or responding to a situation, and that the choices open to us are often more varied than we might have supposed. As the process of historical change unfolds, old arguments or programs may once more become relevant.

A more immediate appeal of history is that it acts as a source of precedent and prediction. Consider the case of the arms race. The decade before the Second World War is commonly regarded as an object lesson in the dangers of military weakness and of appeasing an aggressive power. But one could equally cite the precedent of the First World War, one of those causes was the relentless escalation in armaments from 1890s onwards. The constant process of historical change means that the future will always be partly shaped by historical factors. But whereas the individuals sense of his or her past arises spontaneously, historical knowledge has to be produced. Society has a past which extends back far beyond the lives of the individuals who happen to comprise it at any one time. The raw materials out of which a historical consciousness can be fashioned are accordingly almost unlimited. Those elements which find a place in it represent a selection of truths which are deemed worthy of note. The historians work can be manipulated to promote desired forms of social consciousness; it can remain to academic circles, powerless to influence society for good or ill; or it can become the basis for informed and critical discussion of current issues.