74. Knowing about the past cannot help people to make important decisions today.

When one needs to make some important decisions, his or her decisions would be influenced by two significant factors: his or her own inclination, as well as the experience. Knowing about the past can provide us much experience or empirical law, however, it may also prevent us from thinking innovatively. There is no doubt that even if the past experience is helpful for us to make some important decisions, the more crucial thing we need to mind is not restrict ourselves in the past experience.

At the first place, knowing about the past would prevent us from progressing in some extent. On the one hand, learning from past means we have to abandon our penchant. For many students who are going to enter universities, the decisions of choosing majors are more likely to be influenced by the past experience. Many voices like “do not choose journalism”, or “learning economy makes you rich in the future” have effects on many students. Once they follow these instructions, they need to abandon the majors they are really interested in. On the other hand, learning from past may be at the expanse of being innovative. For example, if the policy makers using past and conservative experience to govern the country, he or she probably would lose the best chance to revolute.

However, the past experience does not only have disadvantages. Knowing about the past can help us to predict what will happen in the future, which would also lead us to make correct decisions. Although the society is developing incessantly, the law of vicissitude is always constant. For example, knowing about the Industry Revolution, most policy makers would know that the techonology is the most important motivations of social development. Learning history or knowing about the past could help us to find the nature of human beings. Although modern people are highly educated and their thoughts have changed a lot, the more substantive characteristics, such as greedy, are still existing. In the history, many things happened for many times as different forms, just because the nature of human beings are unchangable.

The most important thing should be considered is that we should find a balanced point when we learning from the past, and we need to clarify what we should learn. By knowing about the the past, we need to find out the law of vicissitude, the nature of human beings. These things can help us make important decisions in the future, for the reason that they are nearly constant. However, our inclination and creation should not be restricted by the past experience. Since the society keeps developing, new ideas and thoughts are always welcomed.