history is essential to understanding because to understand anything, we must have full awareness of it’s context. the understanding of history however, as it as been presented, to me at least, in my formal education experience in singapore, has taken the step too far. we can learn from the general principles history has to teach us, but weighing factors to questions that are so inconsequential is futile and frustrating. if anything, it has taught me that history is beyond the control of the individual and the collective. every factor (if we can call them factors) has an unknown significance attached to it, much like the butterfly’s flap. how then can we take trends from the past and place them in black box theories and claim to be able to tell the future?

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~ by moz on November 22, 2008.