Being a humanist, I care about human lives. I care about quality of life, health, access to education, equality before the law, the fight against discrimination of all kinds, I care about families, friendships, couples and marriages, the good times and the hardships we persevered through… I care about humans and that they get as good a life as they can possibly have. This means abandoning all preconceptions about what is considered “good” or “bad”, it means that nothing is holy or safe from scrutiny, but it also means that I am focused on the present. The past is history and done and dealt with. What matters is the situation we have at hand right now - what actions we can take to improve the life of everyone, today. For example, the tragedy that unfolded in World War 2 is terrible - humans were hurt, families severed, hopes and dreams crushed. This is terrible and I do care about it in THAT sense. However, beyond the humanistic perspective of “this was terrible and my deepest condolences”, this is not relevant to me. Everyone today deserves the best life they can possibly have, what does knowing about WW2 change about this? It may sound aggressive at first, but it will make sense later: I don't care about World War 2. I don't care about Israel and Palestine. I don't care about Russia and Ukraine. I care about the fact that guns are being used to hurt and kill, to sever, cripple and tear apart, affecting humans right now. I don't care what the IDF has to say or what Hamas wants⁴⁾, just put your guns down. Who cares about WW2 now? We have problems at our hand right now and I don't need no history to know right from wrong.

It has happened to me several times in the past that, during conversations about history I found myself under attack for not caring about history too much. One argumentation is that you need to learn from history to avoid making the same mistakes. And while, sure, the past can be a good tool for getting a feel for mistakes that have already been made, it is not a necessity. It doesn't take a war to know a war. War is bad, whether it happened before or not. Antisemitism is bad, it didn't need World War 2 to find that out. In the same vein, climate change inaction is bad, we already know this even without already having ruined a planet.
Moral imperatives can be deduced from the status quo, history plays no role in this.

“We need history to not repeat our mistakes.” cry the critics. Yes, if only the people in 1933 had some history to draw from to make their decisions, because then World War 2 would never have happened. If we had tales of a previous, intelligent civilization on earth going extinct due to climate change, would that suddenly make people care about it?⁶⁾ No matter what you answer, yes or no, it shines light on some very fundamental flaws in society which are not addressed by learning about history.
The irony is that we do in fact have tales of changing climates leading to the downfall of civilizations. The Mayan decline was through ecological, climate factors.

Just keep in mind that, yes, antisemitism has already happened. Homophobia has already happened. Slavery has already happened. War and terror are deeply rooted in human history. The modern times revival of these old things in addition to the current rise of antisemitism (the 2023 Israel war on Gaza is happening as I am writing this), the LGBTQIA+ moral panic triggered by conservative pundits etc., history has little to say about these things that I couldn't already deduce from just the application of ethics. History may be able to give context and that is good, but in terms of “how much can I learn from history that allows me to make better decisions today?”, history is, unfortunately, not the gold mine it is made out to be, and looking at the world out there, we are definitely not learning from it. Of course we're not.

For example, the mistake of being politically inactive. Only ever casting a vote every four years or so to get a say on who gets to take a turn is certainly not being 'politically active'. “The politicians are breaking their campaign promises”, but nobody ever thinks about doing something about it. Political inaction of the people is what enables rampant corruption in rich countries like Germany. If corruption actually sufficiently affected re-election rates or caused massive protests and strikes, things would change very rapidly. It can't ever be fully eliminated, but it could be made politically insignificant. If climate change inaction lead to horrible re-election rates or mass strikes, we would be the first nation to fully transition to renewables. History shows us how this mistake was made time and time again, but nobody is learning. Where the hell is the learning!?? Nobody is not reapeating other people's mistakes. There's war, discrimination, bullying, inflated body images, marginalization, but certainly every individual thinks they're not part of it somehow. “I definitely do not marginalize people! I would know if I did, but because I am a good person (obviously) I know that I am not.”⁷⁾

Everything we see and smell and know and feel is part of a long, sliding scale of history that extends ever-forward in lockstep with time that moves ahead at the same pace itself. As such, every piece of information we know is based on history. When I say that war is bad, I rely on the experiences from the past where I have felt suffering, declare suffering as bad⁸⁾, go on to claim that war has a lot of suffering and therefore that it is “bad” and should be avoided.⁹⁾ Every conception of ideas that I ever had relies on it's own little “history”, just like scientific discovery is always a history in of itself.

However, this is not what I mean when I say “history”. Scientific discoveries may have historic context, but they stand on their own without it. Gold doesn't react with oxygen, which makes it useful for applications where rust would present major problems. This is a fact, and other facts may have been established in the past. I may care about individual facts that were established in the past, but I do not care about how they came to be, ie. the “history” part of that discovery. I don't know how and why this chemical property of gold was discovered, and I don't know what other elements scientists or alchemists have looked at. Irrelevant. If I need something that doesn't rust and isn't gold then I can consult previously established facts or do some scientific inquiry to find that out, but this still does not necessitate “history”. Just because a fact was established in the past (like “water melts or freezes at 0°C”) doesn't make it history. If you still think it does, then it's probably a Words issue.

There are a few problems with the discussion of History in the present day. Number one is that our recollection of past events is biased. Someone without the means to immortalize their deeds is forgotten, while someone with those means may have immortalized anything but deeds. In the past, for example, writing history will have pretty much been reserved to kings and queens, while the greatest bulk of humanity will have been in positions that prevent them from making any lasting impacts at all. We still have their pottery¹⁰⁾, but that only gives us a very limited perspective on the past. There is a common discussion about the “A people's history of X”-kind of books which are meant to be a less biased, more accurate representation of humanity, but ultimately those books will still be just as uninteresting as those we have about great kings, queens, commanders and warriors. They will still write about systemic issues and that it will have been hard to address them; essentially they will prove to us that history may not repeat, but it does rhyme.

Another problem with history is that it is very easy to lie about. Not only did the people in the past lie¹¹⁾, people in the modern day lie as well. History is very easy to present in very different narratives depending on how you want it, by leaving out facts, changing some or completely manufacturing others. Whatever you do, there are good odds that you will find historic “evidence” that supports your position. It takes wide knowledge of a topic and a holistic understanding of the people, the dynamics, individuals and pretty much every piece of evidence that can be gathered on a topic to properly analyze and understand individual ones [individual pieces of evidence]. Most things that can be said about history can be defended by something and discussions over the most banale things can therefore go on forever if at least one side of the discussion does not know what they are talking about. For example, there will be many people who will claim that Hitler was amazing, and they will find stuff that will - on the surface - seem to support this hypothesis. Laymen like myself and most of society may still feel like up to the task to engage that person and lay out just why and how this is wrong, but as anyone who has ever talked to a conspiracy theorist will know, if they're deep enough into it then they will eventually outmatch you. And those people know how to lie, distort and misrepresent. History is particularly susceptible to this.

This is not to say that learning about history is completely useless or that it shouldn't be done. History can be a great tool for personal development. Above all, history is the greatest tool to explain the status quo. However bad, history is usually the best way to explain why things are currently the way they are - especially when things are BAD the way they are, like rules and regulations. History is why we still have pseudo-monarchies in the world, why religions still have such a strong grasp on society and the views of individuals (homophobia, etc.) and so much more. So, while history can explain how it came to how things are, deliberation of how things should be and how to get there is better left to other fields of study.
On another note, history is a valid and legitimate point for scientific inquiry. Assessing and preserving human history (and beyond!) shall provide us with scientific insight not elsewhere gained - we don't know all things that people before us or even just the world in general have known. There are tons of scientific insight buried all across earth, bones, corpses, relics, sediments/rocks and whatever else you can come up with, all of which tell us things we haven't known before and may give us utmost important clues about biology (evolution was “discovered” as a result of inquiring about history, for example), geology, physics, astronomy, cultures (and by extension social sciences), psychology or just the nature of things. Again, in this context I do care about history because it finds ways to be useful to us today.

See the full page on Secularization.
There is one aspect of history that I like in particular, and it has to do with “learning how things in the present came to be”: Putting things into historical context. For example, the modern day wave of discrimination against transgender is just one step in a centuries-long fight against discrimination of all kind. The only thing that changed is the exact position of the Overton Window, but not its implications. These days it's mostly against Transgender, Homosexuality and Mental Illness¹²⁾, back then it was black people, even more homosexuals, jews and women¹³⁾, before that it was slaves, then before that unbelievers of Christianity heretics, witches, still more jews; the Romans used to discriminate against Christians when that started to pick up steam¹⁴⁾. In contrast, they didn't even think of discriminating people for their color.

History shows us that there have always been brake discs (the Romans, Christians, racists, homophobes, modern day bigots, etc.) pressing themselves really hard against the wheel of societal progress, yet the wheel always kept on turning. They will lose this battle like they lost every other battle in the history of mankind, but it will probably take some time. Some may call this.. encouraging? Remember, though, that this is not an argument against trans discrimination. Trans discrimination is bad because the premises it is based on are flawed, not because¹⁵⁾ it is the same as many other things that were proven as wrong before.

Posit me one piece of information that meets the following criteria:
1) It must “be history”.
2) It must be necessary to make good decisions about modern day problems.
3) It must not be information directly related to the modern day.¹⁶⁾¹⁷⁾
4) It must be a piece of information that cannot be deduced just from modern philosophy and looking at the modern day.

Essentially, the spirit of this challenge is that you close your eyes to find your inner balance, think of a historic event you are knowledgeable about and tell me one useful conclusion from it that I couldn't know without history.¹⁸⁾
I claim that you cannot find such a piece of insight - and I say that, except in special cases like mentioned in 3), all information required to navigate the modern day can be deduced from looking at the modern day, making history redundant.

March 15 marks the day of Caesar's assassination. What is it about the assassination of Caesar that makes history important? Is the fact that some emperor on -44/03/15 got fragged going to be useful factual knowledge to me one day? Is it the overarching message, that Caesar pushed his political luck a bit too far and that playing the game of political power creates problems? And if so, why would I be unable to know this just by thinking rationally?