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.

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Some mistakes just need to be made. Well, not all mistakes, but mistakes like being dumb as a kid. Many parents are overly protective of their children, never allowing them to do anything bad and restricting them to the tee to prevent them from ever making the same mistakes that they (the parents) made in their childhood. This never works and prevents the children from making crucial life experience (it's why THEY did it despite THEIR parents probably trying the same with THEM). Without ever burning their fingers these children tend to grow up with significant problems, unable to do most or almost all things on their own. The goal here is to let them make mistakes in a safe and guided setting where life experience can be gathered but a safety net is provided so that the child can be confident and always has a safe space to retreat to.
Anyway, the point is that many mistakes cannot realistically be prevented and those that could be prevented don't need history to do so. For example, 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… Wait, there was World War 1?

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.

Being a humanist, I care about human lifes. 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 condolensces”, this is not relevant to me. Everyone today deserves the best life they can possibly have, what does knowing about WW2 change about this? I will say it: I don't care about World War 2. Or perhaps a bit more recent: 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 wants, just fucking 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. If you want to be able to point at things and go “yes, humans have made this mistake before” then go ahead and learn about history, I hope someone else will actually do something about the problem instead.

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, relicts, 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 is do care about history because it finds ways to be useful to us today.

Write about how I like to put things into historical context as to explain their nature.