Is the past and present important?

Do the past and present offer any guidance for the future?

In my opinion, I feel that the past and present will uncover the future. One of the reasons why people learn history is to learn whether the actions taken in the past should be prevented or extended. We learn so as to not make the same mistakes and to improvise on it if needed. Through the past, people learn to correct the mistakes and prevent it from occurring again. Take for example the case of the Maria Hertogh riots of 1950, racial riots occurred due to the misunderstandings between races. The lack of respect for one another was one of the reasons why racial discrimination was prevalent in the past. Thus, to ensure that such a problem would not happen in Singapore again, the government was very careful when dealing with such sensitive issues.

In a society like Singapore, reciprocity and mutual respect are cardinal values for any productive debate on policy issues. The government has learnt that through the years, thus it is absolutely right to say that the past offer us guidance on how the future should be like. Likewise, the present offers an insight of present policies and the what-should and what-should-not been done actions which will provide some ideas into the future. As the society change with time, it undergoes metamorphosis and rules, policies have to change with it. In the case of Singapore, where the Court banned gay sex in the past and no one was willingly to come forward to speak, the Court may be starting to change it's rule with the increasing acceptance of gay sex by people. This shows how the government must change its rules and regulation as the society changes its mindset. The past thus gave us guidance on how such issues should be handled with care as riots can break out if handled inappropriately.

Therefore, in my opinion, the past and present is very important to the future. It is essential as it provides humans an outlook of the wrongs and rights of the past decades and whether humans are still doing the right things presently. It is only when we can look at past and present actions, can we then decide what and how the future should hold for us.