History and Perspective

The study of history is a crucial component within our society, it allows us to educate ourselves so we are aware of what changes the world has gone through and what people have faced within the past. Not only this, but studying history will hopefully allow us to come closer to why certain events occurred and via the analysis of multiple perspectives we may be able to come to conclusions for why specific decisions were made and possibly theorize what the alternate reality may have been. But why is this so important for us? Studying history will hopefully allow us to avoid making mistakes we have made in the past, we often look back at the mistakes we have made and realise the grief it has caused us and it is of human instinct for us to wish to avoid bringing that same grief upon us. Unfortunately the study of history does not present itself with no strings attached, one of the greatest problems we encounter as humans is finding the truth, is trying to differentiate between the truth and the false propaganda put forward by the media which tries to divert us from ever finding the truth. This is why when we study history we must go deeper than the first layer of information, we can’t merely depend on the recounts provided by historians but we must look at the historian themselves. We must study the environment the historian was raised in, the experiences that he/she may have felt and the views and beliefs that they hold dear to them, this is all fundamental in understanding what the actual truth is, history will always be tainted by bias, but this is why we attempt to study the context of the historian, so we are hopefully able to view both history and personal perspectives separately.

If we were to study Primo Levi’s compositions we would open ourselves up to a segment of Levi’s experiences throughout the war and the troubles and scenarios that he had to face, but how are we certain that what Levi informs us with is segregated from bias and personal perspectives.