Same reason I think reading (for fun) is important.
A friend of mine once asked me why I like to read when movies are so much easier to enjoy and visualise.
I told him it’s the difference between looking at the world with your hands over your eyes, peaking through the cracks in between your fingers. Reading offers a whole new perspective.
I think the same applies with history. Sure, most people can get by just fine in life with out much knowledge of history. But really, if you snub your nose at history, you’re only making your world that much smaller.
Heh, I asked my Dad this exact same question when I was around 10 or so. His answer: “So you don’t look like a dumb ass when you converse with people”
It’s crass, but there is a modicum of truth to that statement.
It might be important to understand who you are and what processes made up the society you live in today.
Why do some countries have decidedly different political systems? Why does the US not have universal healthcare?.
Some of the things that affect you directly go back thousands of years, in the UK there is still a certain amount of feeling about the Norman invasion, in Israel it goes back even further.
In the case of the Norman invasion, we still have our Dukes Earls and Lords inhabiting the choice land, and today their ancestors still have more opportunity, which means they get to go to the best schools, and universities and have better employment prospects, and with that goes lifespan, because it is also a reality that those higher up the social scale are more likely to live longer.
In Israel the issues are much more starkly defined, and the future for that place in the longer term, over the next few centuries is most uncertain, it will be turbulent for sure - and this is an argument that is thousands of years older than the Norman invasion of Britain.
Closer to yourself, you might just take a look at your own family background, go back three or four generations and see what they did for a living, and how that perhaps affected your own life choices,
Last of all, project all this into your own future, maybe that of your children, what do you hope for them, how do you wish to be remembered and maybe you can humble yourself a little when you understand the small role each of us plays in history, especially when you are feeling overconfident.
You don’t have to read very deep in history to get an understanding of how our present world gained its social and political structure. The thing that first amazed me when I started studying history was the way it built on itself. In California you have to take two lower division history courses for pretty much any degree: History to 1500 and History From 1500 to Today, or something to those effects. I took them in reverse chronological order, and was fascinated by picking out the threads in the pre-Renaissance history that led to things I’d read about in the “modern” history. There’s an amazing wash of culture and society that flows from place to place around the globe through time, and it is constantly erasing and creating patterns like waves on a beach. We are merely one shape cut into the sand of this world, but because we have the ability to record history, we can see the shapes that have come before. And a very wise person might, from those shapes, predict what will come next.
In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond makes the point that written history permits the reader to benefit from the experiences of many decisionmakers in the past.
To use Diamond’s example, in the infamous encounter at Cajamarca, the Incan emperor Atahualpa was suspicious of the intentions of the Spanish, and knew (from spies) they were not gods, but he was young (in his thirties) and had only the knowledge of treachery and political machination he had been able to acquire personally or from the advice of courtiers.
The Spanish, by contrast, had had access to a vast written history of malfeasance and dirty tricks and knew exactly what they were doing.
While it’s possible to imagine Atahualpa should have expected treachery logically, that’s different from knowing hundreds of examples culled from thousands of years’ experience of political turmoil and clashes between different cultures.
Atahualpa came to the encounter hobbled by naiveté and ignorance; Pizzaro, although probably illiterate himself, was steeped in a written tradition of relevant historical knowledge of warfare, politics, treachery, and intimidation. The Incan emperor was tricked, and paid with his life – the destruction of his empire and the enslavement of his people soon followed.
Would it be interesting to know where your great-great-grandparents came from? Where did they live before they came to where your family lives now? Why did they come here?
Did your ancestors move several times, or did they stay in the ancestral locale for generations?
Is your family one of the earliest in your region? A founder perhaps?
Did they move due to famine, drought, persecution, love interest, work, school?
Is there a famous person among your ancestors? Was there an inventor, writer, designer, or artist in the family?
Even if broad-based history is of no interest, family history can be, and should be of interest. Searching through the family history could turn up some very interesting people who could have had an involvement or an impact on the overall history.
And more directly, Pizarro was aware of what Cortez had done in Mexico and Atahualpa was not. Their comparative knowledge of that recent history gave Pizarro an advantage over Atahualpa.
In threads like this I’m always reminded of the quote by William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” The more I think about it, the more profound it seems.