I like history. It has always been one of my favourite subjects to learn outside of work, but my interest in history is very casual. I enjoy the history of art and science, biographies of prominent historical figures and history of places to which I travel. Being an engineer, I have always felt that pursuit of history, while entertaining and intellectually stimulating, lacked the immediate usefulness beyond the obvious “learning from mistakes of others” sort of things.
Recently, I read an interesting observation about the applied aspect of history in a series of lectures about the history of Russia by Vasily Klyuchevsky (1841 – 1911). His idea is that an ideal state of the society is that of perfect balance, when each subject/element of the society is living and functioning to its full potential, without diminishing his/her own rights or oppressing others. Klyuchevsky describes history of a society as an accounting balance sheet, a bank statement of advances and shortcomings left to us by previous generations. If our ancestors have made great progress in certain areas, but fell behind (with respect to other societies) in others, it is our generation’s role to make up for the shortcomings (or at least, to work towards reducing the deficit), while taking advantage of the positive elements passed on to us.
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