WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LEARN HISTORY FOR WELLBEING?

Knowing our history is the key to unlocking a more equitable, healthy and compassionate tomorrow.

The biggest misconception about history is the idea that it doesn’t matter. 

It's not hard to understand why people think this way — most of us were bored to tears by history classes in high school and, as a result, feel like history is just information about a distant past. 

Studying the past, however, is essential to understand the people around us and the challenges we face as a society, to heal the pain that exists, to create opportunities where they are lacking and to realize the promise of democracy for all. You simply cannot solve for problems of the future without understanding the real stories of the past. 

Why Does History Matter?

To illustrate how vital history is to how we understand the world, let's look at an example. The brilliant economist Lisa Cook, wrote a paper refuting a core thesis developed by the Noble Prize-winning economist Paul Romer, about how innovation economies work. In his work, he had missed the impact of legislation that limited access to opportunity and safety for some members of the community. 

It took her 10 years to publish her work, despite the support of three Nobel prize-winning economists — not because her economics were faulty, but because the reviewers did not know or understand the history supporting her work. 

Because the history was missing, she had to write a supplemental paper outlining the relevant historical research and narratives — which she painstaking reconstructed in archives — in order to help the (all white, all male) reviewer board understand the implications of her work. 

What does this mean? Well, it shows that big theories, big decisions, and big systems are crafted based on flawed interpretations of reality — and when they are, people suffer. 

If we want to create a world in which fewer people suffer and more people have opportunity, we must all be students of history.

Making History Accessible 

A huge part of getting people engaged, interested, and invested in history is making historical resources accessible and understandable, but many historians write only for other historians, with language so complicated and academic that it makes the core ideas inaccessible. 

I am extremely passionate about breaking down the barrier between academics and general readers, and about finding new ways to spread historical insights so that we can rewire our present for a better future. 

Historians are doing incredible work every day to piece together the stories that dispel false myths and let us see more clearly. It is our obligation as global citizens to care about what they find as it is highly relevant to the world around us. History is human understanding, love and interest in someone else’s story. I hope that everyone can find that source of power and love in history.

Jose Luis Pelaez/ Getty Images

History for Wellbeing

History and wellbeing are intimately intertwined at all levels. 

On an individual level, human beings are not well if they feel disconnected. We are hard-wired to create connection and community, and we thrive when we have a sense of belonging and purpose. History, if taught well, gives you exactly that: an understanding of who you are, a love for other people, and the capacity to develop personal effectiveness as a change maker. 

On a societal level, history feeds a deep passion for humanity as a whole and fuels our commitment to making the (relatively new) concepts of universal rights to freedom, justice and equality a reality for all. The notion of building a just society in which all are well is a human construct, it is an idea, and unless we understand where it comes from, and what the barriers are to achieving it, we will never get there. We have no chance of getting rid of the kinds of oppression and exclusion that hurt millions of people today unless we face the hard history of our past. 

On a planetary level, we will keep making mistakes as a society unless we start steering our economy and political systems with information that is correct—and that, too, is history. If we tell the story of industrialization purely as one of progress, if we glorify extractive growth and ignore the fact that this kind of “growth" has hurt the planet and created jobs that dehumanize people, we can never create a model of existing on the planet that is regenerative and enables the wellbeing of all. 

Our current system that enables the wellbeing of a few at the expense of many and of the planet, is both environmentally and morally unsustainable.

History is our guide to improving it. 

Source: collective.round.glass/learn/history-for-wellbeing