Understanding History for Human Development.

Abstract

History has been misunderstood to mean the past. However, past present and future are related. As we try to establish ourselves to feel at home, our past makes our present and so the future. Forces of history produces a given society and as human being we should not abuse history nor use it to interfere with other people freedom and nation building as it will bring suffering. History is thus about using our memory to building our institution so that the society can become productive and meaningful. If we don’t memorize our past we could be in a real trouble to forget who we are. The significance of the past for us today involves selection and choice in which our contemporary concern can have a reasonable role. To understand how and why we live as we do, we cannot avoid appealing to the past to explain how and why we got to be this way. It is not the past alone that plays this crucial role in shaping our identities nor less important is the act of remembering the past. In this paper, therefore, the author will pay more attention on why history is a living memory and that by killing or forgetting our past we lose our way as we navigate our way into an unknown future. So how do we reconnect with the past? The author think we should tell stories about it. Method for this study involved data collection from secondary sources.