What am I missing out from History?

Patterns of human behavior over the last few millenia. Where we’ve been tells us a lot about how and why we got here and where we’re going. You just have to look beyond the dry dates and numbers and see the people.
Welcome to Fluther.

You can describe everything as “things happen.”

Do you pay attention to what happened to you yesterday, last month or year, five years ago? That’s your history. Without it, you have nothing on which to build today.

Things in history that have affected the future. Civil rights movement, the constitution, the US winning the Revolutionary War, things like that. I happen to find history very fascinating

History is fascinating! It was just History courses in school that were a bore. Did you know that the ancient Romans lived a more modern life 2000 years ago than the President of the USA did in 1901? They had multi-story apartment buildings, indoor plumbing, metal bath tubs, Heck, they even had water meters. They had health clubs with hot baths, Huge stadiums with major entertainment venues and special effects, delicatessens… On and on. Would you believe that the White House didn’t even have indoor plumbing in 1901?
Did you know that the artist Caravaggio understood dramatic stage lighting hundreds of years before artificial stage lighting was invented? Have a look at his paintings; it’s quite clear:
http://www.jesus-pictures.net/the-crucifixion-of-peter-by-caravaggio/

Learning history allows you to see how different societies conceptualized local and international events and ancient history – it’s an interesting reflection on different cultures and it’s definitely a good way to learn that everything is cyclical and that no one learns from history.

The reason you should like history is “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” *

But if you aren’t enjoying it, we can’t persuade you to like it.

Personally, I always want to know what it was like to live in a different place and time, I want to FEEL it. Really badly, I want to know. That’s why I read.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_of_Reason

Ever wonder why everything is the way it is today?

Understand history, and you will know why. History is an ongoing web of connections between people, events, and ideas that continues to unfurl itself and grow as time goes on. To understand history is to understand what it means to be human.

All history is gossip. Throughout time, human nature remains constant. People 100 years ago or more, acted in much the same way people do today, and situations were just as complex.

Oh, and read some Dostoevsky…he’s got great insights into what history is and isn’t.

You are missing out of the analysis of patterns of human behavior and the consequences thereof.

History needs to have logic and perspective applied to it.

Things don’t “just happen” when people are behind them. Earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters “just happen”, but the reactions to those things, and the things that people do to each other (and the reasons their civilizations rise and fall) usually have causes that are attributable to the actions of individuals. That’s history. Dates? Names of treaties and kings? Yeah, that’s part of the context of history, the mile markers. But that’s like driving across country and only recalling the road signs. History is the road trip itself.

I really wish I would have caught this when it was first asked.
To sum up: to be an expert in any field-it’s very helpful to know that fields history from a learning mistakes and realizing possibilities standpoint.

To detail and give an example: I think as history goes, so goes culture, and broadly culture is the make up of the way humans live. History is apart of every other study. The history of a subject (for example) math, fashion, science, music, education, sex, women, on and on and on is a broad part of each individual subject. The last class I took in college was “Biographical Approach to Scientific Literacy” basically looking at great scientists and their discoveries from a historical standpoint, and it brought out so much significant scientific knowledge.