History is collective memory.
If an individual suffers memory loss for whatever reason, the effects can be devastating on their lives. They forget what they like and dislike, they forget what they value about their lives and they lose any sense of who they are. But an individual would have the opportunity to reconstruct their history by talking to the people who know them.
If an individual has lost all knowledge of their history it is tragic for them, the effects of Alzheimers or traumatic brain injury can reduce a person to what appears to be an empty shell.
But what if a nation loses its collective memory, because its history is no longer taught, is taught badly or with such prejudice to a certain perspective as to be worthless?
What will be the effect of the loss or deterioration in the quality of our collective memory?
What if our understanding of our history is lost?
What if we forget how we used to live, the mistakes and the injustices that used to be in place?
Will we return to repeating mistakes, will we reinstate prior injustices and return to prejudices that used to be prevalent in our society?
By understanding our history, we understand the direction in which we as a community, large or small, are going, we can see the changes that are happening to our society and we will have examples and precedents before us that can guide us and provide us with ways of coping with new situations as they arise. Without understanding our history everything is new, everything is a challenge, we have to learn everything afresh. By understanding the changes and events that have happened in our past, we are much more able to cope with new changes and new events that happen in our present, and much better equipped to appreciate how our world will change in the future.
A loss of collective memory would mean that we as a community lose our identity, we lose our shared values, and we forget all the progress that was achieved through the struggles of our ancestors. Without a shared sense of our own history we, as a community of people, would be an empty shell, a blank piece of paper, a cipher, powerless to define ourselves and reliant on others to do it for us.
Knowledge is power, and historical knowledge is the sharpest, most effective tool we have in understanding what is happening in the world now, and what will happen in the future. It must be retained, investigated, and passed on to those who don't yet know it, to give them the tools they will need to deal with the future. Any employer who does not understand the value of the skills of a historian or have a historical perspective, is one who, when faced with a crisis or a new situation, will find it difficult to cope, hard to understand and impossible to see a way beyond.
