Why do you study History?

[Gecko1]

I've been writing an essay for my Oxford application about this very topic and I became quite interested in hearing your opinions.

I study history because I believe that mankind traces all of its actions back to historical precedent. People justify their actions based on past events and the past has an emotional connection from which we are preconditioned to build our moral compasses off of.

Why do you study history?

 

[Tee Kay]

It's fascinating.

That's it, really.

 

[Joecoolyo]

What tailless said.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

It helps us understand literature. Take that, Derrida.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

It is the record of who we are, and where we came from.

 

[Dachs]

Because that's what I'm good at? Honestly, though, I dunno. I try not to think about it too much. I start wondering about why the hell I do something this stupid and those kinds of questions get uncomfortable.

Sorry, that's not much help, I know.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

Because we're too intelligent for real jobs.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

It helps us forget about the reality we live in !

 

[Tee Kay]

It helps us forget about the reality we live in !

Isn't our reality the direct result of history?

 

[Lord Baal]

Because that's what I'm good at? Honestly, though, I dunno. I try not to think about it too much. I start wondering about why the hell I do something this stupid and those kinds of questions get uncomfortable.

Sorry, that's not much help, I know.

Pretty much this. Pretty much this for everything I do, actually. My life is meaningless and empty.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Pretty much this. Pretty much this for everything I do, actually. My life is meaningless and empty.

Thirded.

My parents were super interested in history, and that passed on to me. I've been known from a young age as "that history guy" in school, which, I suppose, caused me to study more history, which caused me to be even more regarded as the history guy which...

until I decided that's what I wanted to do as a career. Now fingers crossed that it pans out!

 

[Lord Baal]

Thirded.

My parents were super interested in history, and that passed on to me. I've been known from a young age as "that history guy" in school, which, I suppose, caused me to study more history, which caused me to be even more regarded as the history guy which...

until I decided that's what I wanted to do as a career. Now fingers crossed that it pans out!

Yeah, the historian career hasn't been working too well for me. Due to a bunch of scandals the government has frozen new hiring on a bunch of bureaucratic jobs - history jobs included - and I don't live anywhere near a war memorial or museum which would have a place for me. Best hope's a think-tank, and Australia doesn't have many of them. My brother-in-law is doing alright from it, but he actually got a job with a think-tank while still at uni. Lousy 98% in American Foreign Policy 1945-present.

 

[LightSpectra]

Military history is fascinating to me because warfare is an amalgamation of every intellectual aspect of human competition. A successful commander has to understand and implement proper tactics, strategy, technical innovation, logistics, scouting, administration, charisma, psychology, war ethics and have a bit of fortune. A paper I read recently stated that the two models for modern bureaucracy are the Roman Catholic episcopal hierarchy and the German General Staff during the era of the elder Moltke.

 

[Luckymoose]

I find it the easiest academic field for myself. Which makes it more likely for me to succeed in it. I also love history.

 

[Tee Kay]

I want so much to rather be studying history than engineering.

 

[Masada]

Simple answer, change.

 

[Lone Wolf]

It can be fun, it's relatively easy (barring some technical boring auxiliary stuff like archival science), it teaches you to look at political perturbations of modern life with the same eye you look at historical events.

 

[BuckyRea]

When I first got into it, it was for the soap opera / telenovela qualities of history. Crazy, disastrous things happen to people and history makes it easy to get a grander view of how these crappy events shape the way people handle their lives.

As I get older, I find myself more drawn to history for what it reveals about my identity as an American and (allegedly) a human being. When I read a biography of George Washington, it not only gives me better signposts about how to conduct my own life, it actually seems to bolster my self esteem.

It's also nice to look back and see that most of the leaders in my country's past weren't jerkwads.

 

[Verbose]

Because one of the things one can learn from history, is that the wielders of power have always been very interested in how it is put together. Official perceptions of what should be documented, and what actually can be documented historically, and any eventual misfit between the two, should be suspected of being significant for what it might tell us about society and ourselves.

Something like that.

 

[Communisto]

For the chicks, duh