IRL/TOK

Can history provide a guide to understanding contemporary affairs? Can it provide a guide to the future? What might be “the lessons of history” for future generations?

Yes history can provide a guide to a a better understanding of contemporary affairs. For instance with it we can "predict" the future since history often repeats itself and can be seen throughout time. For example in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqG_ltj3CrQ propaganda can be seen as a ploy for the future generations to take hold of and can still be seen today. By being able to use propaganda in daily life many political issues are able to be furthered, contemporary affairs that use propaganda are elections into the government or even in other countries to make sure they understand the countries viewpoints. This topic of campaigns today can be seen in China in the past, lessons of history and how it repeats itself can be seen in the parallel with www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CbWq6-dQSM and the contemporary affairs today. It helps us better understand the concept that in fact "history is a lesson" in which many chose not to learn. Bribery and and manipulation can be seen in order to get power in China but on a lower scale it can be seen in a recent governor who bribed and manipulated people in order to get more money and power. Lobbyists can be seen in politics today and shows how manipulation and money is still part of affairs. Lessons that can be learned from the past usually come up when we get in the same crisis again and look back, the value of being able to foreshadow from the history and bring it to the future and what might happen if for example we have an economic crisis as we are right now, examples in history such as the Great Depression and www.voanews.com/english/archive (Russian inflation). These example are on a much larger scale but can still help out the contemporary politicians and citizens so that it might be a lesser impact. By reading the past history we can look for trends and parallels so that reoccurring atrocities might not happen again but as many historians said in the past and present that denying history can lead to an ignorant future and reoccurring atrocities.