I think a good first place to start is to speak about why history is important today. There is of course talk about it being “hard to get a job” with a history major. However, I think it remains important to acknowledge the importance of history and its related areas, and what it provides to culture and society. Feel free to post your own answers.
I think it’s also important because you can see how everything built upon everything else and became what it is today.
I feel like NS, as a game, is a short-term example of the concept of history. If you take time to research TEP’s past, you can see where we get a lot of legislation and culture from. It’s the same exact thing with IRL.
Everything has a reason and the only thing that reveals said reason is the past. So history is extremely important to understand why we got to where we are and where we are going. And this applies to both human society, individual countries, communities, families, and even individuals. It’s kinda cool.
I do think that the type of money you get with a history major is important, though. History is important, and should be valued more, but in the end people need jobs to survive. Especially with the common notion of college being the key to a much higher income (100k per year sounds better than 15-30k), and people just don’t want to spend 4-6 years only to have their major seem “useless” to them. So I think those concerns shouldn’t be dismissed, but rather thought of. Like, why do people say it is so hard to get a job studying history, and what can be done about it?
As you have stated here, history is nothing but a tool to understand the present. In current day, history is seen more like a hobby than like a real profession possibility: probably this is consequence of the image the media have given, with history being known more through movies, literature and videogames than through direct approach, as well as the maximum value given to material benefit instead of an intellectual which can be used to make a better society. We keep on commiting errors that were previously made in the past, and sometimes we use the same solutions that back then were used. So, definitely, history has got devaluated as a profession, as it doesn’t produce material benefit, and it is indeed extremely difficult to live from it outside of the academic sphere. It’s a difficult issue, with even more difficult solutions, and probably this last one goes through a better recognition of history as the science it is and the enormous benefits it has for every aspect in life.
