Introduction
History is one of the most important studies which shapes our attitudes towards the past and structures our present and future. History matters because it helps people to understand the world around them and structure it in accordance with the past events and their outcomes. History works on factual material and data established with confidence. It is possible to assume that modern society would be unable to understand current events and processes without the knowledge of the past and analysis of its consequences for modern people.
Discussion
Contested histories allow researchers to rewrite literature and political sciences as they place events and facts in a historical continuum shaped by certain ideologies and social principles. It is possible to say that we interpret social and political processes, works of literature and pedagogical issues through lens of historical environment and its meaning for the populace. Scientific data are not the only well-ascertained data (Gaddis 98). History constructs our identity defining it through the prism of historical significance and insignificance of certain events and processes. We perceive history as truth based on facts and scientific interpretations of data. History shapes our values and views, principles and national ideals. It supplies us we materials and arguments for thought. Then people see that these facts involve some comprehensible need founded in the nature of things and providing people with a reason (Carr 43).
Facts and historical interpretations are linked in order to have the objective content of history. The history of the US proves that people understand themselves and the others learning and interpreting historical events of the past. For instance, the Constitution and the Declaration of Human Rights created a new understanding of freedom and liberty (Roark et al 76). On the one hand people have an awareness of dignity and of the self-respect of the human person, a desire for freedom and friendship, a recognition of the law: government of the people, for the society and by the people, a growing importance for civil liberties and for justice, an declaration of power over nature (Carr 43).
History helps us to understand and construct bodily identity studying descriptions of Early Americans and social values of different historical periods. Thus the life of society advances and progresses so the psychical identity changes over time. Also, historical images can be degraded and dissolute by reason of the passivity of things. Furthermore, what is religious is above time and exempt from aging. In some historical epochs, moral and ethical principles prevailed material values, so modern society follows these ideals and values as the core principles of human relations. The period of colonization represents the age of strict values and principles most Americans are looking for; not when there is a national rage to identify and be identified with worldly and moral influence. Modern society views things as representative of the common impulse to allocate meaning and importance to everything in sight (Carr 65).
Conclusion
In sum, history matters because it helps people to reconstruct their past and predict their future. A number of historical facts are accumulated by history, and now from these historical facts related to a certain period of history ideals and thoughts are inductively abstracted by historians. History is by itself basically progressive. Thus, a being linked to reason must essentially be progressive. It means that historical facts are used as a framework for construction of social and political identities and interpretation of certain processes and events.
Works Cited
Carr, E.H. What Is History? Vintage, 1967.
Gaddis, J.L. The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. Oxford University Press, USA, 2004.
Roark, J. L. et al. The American Promise, A History of the United States, Bedford/St. Martin’s; 2nd edition, 2002.