Without War There is No Peace by S.K.

“ You F**king jew!” The words echoed throughout the restaurant and customers began to stare.  As Martin saw the faces turn to him, the stranger shouted “dirty jew!”and left with his reuben sandwich.

Martin had walked into the Boulder sports bar intending to quietly watch a basketball game with some fellow warriors fans. He never expected The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a book taught by German schools under the Nazi regime) and Rothschild conspiracies to be main topics of conversation.

As the daughter of prominent jews in her community and a distant relative of the rothschild’s, Martin’s mother, Susan, was lucky to escape Germany with her father in the years before Nazism took hold. Martin had learned from his grandfather what anti- semitism was like and had experienced it firsthand in high school after several altercations with a fellow classmate.

Though the experience is nothing new to him, Martin hopes for a future without anti-semitism and spends most of his free time reading up on current and past events in an effort to not lose touch with humanity.

Although hate and discrimination are at the front of the bulletin board today, for the majority of the time since the war the world was divided into two the distinct categories of Capitalist and Communist.

Germany was split up shortly after the war into a capitalist west and a communist east. According to The Washington Post and other media outlets, this division is still seen today, even though the country has been united for over twenty-five years.

The west contains more disposable income from their more capitalist society. While the east includes more farmland and a higher unemployment rate due to their later transition into capitalism. Consequently, young eastern Germans feel that they have to move to the west because of the job opportunities and competitive wages. However the grass isn’t always greener in the west and due to its capitalism, western germans produce more trash and CO2 emissions than their eastern counterparts.

As Americans we have World War Two to thank for our quick rise to the top of the global food chain. This was mainly due to the incredibly vast requirements of the war effort, the resource allocation to do that and the facilities born out of it.

During the war The United States built thousands of industrial factories to make all the weaponry and equipment needed for ourselves and all the allies in the war, and once the war was over these factories were converted to treat the american consumer.

World War Two was the most consequential event in the last Century and even though as Americans it happened “a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away”, its effects can be seen all over the homeland and the world. From the rise of communism to the explosion of american industry and consumerism, World war Two has affected almost every part of our daily life.

The importance of History in Modern Day Society by Hunter Kinney

I realized my love for history when I was in sophomore year my history class was  world history. I had a teacher that realized I had great knowledge of the subjects so she would push me to answer all the questions, or would give me a harder subject to write a paper on. And through these challenges I realized how much I was enjoying doing all the hard work and research to write the papers or to make a presentation. We talked often about world history and how some events could have changed the world with just the smallest change in the actions taken. These talks were the final push I needed to realize how much I truly love the subject of history. I finished the year with not only a newfound love of history but also a plan for the future. I knew I wanted to study world history in college and take that knowledge to get a job in a top museum or maybe come back home and get a job at the Denver Natural History museum.

The importance of learning history is so that you can make better thought out decisions in today’s democracy. Having a general knowledge of history is good and can be beneficial but without a better understanding of what you know and why it happened you could never know why the world is what it is today. Knowing why the conquistadors invaded Mexico, and why the Belgians took over the congo with an iron fist are two different topics but they have the same purpose behind them. And knowing the purpose is the most important thing when talking about history events. Without knowing the purpose of events in history is like not knowing history at all. The importance of knowing the purpose in history events is so you can actually apply those events to modern day events that happen all around you everyday. For example knowing why Pres. Lincoln first got the North engaged in the Civil War is one of the most important facts about American history there is to know. Knowing why he made the Gettysburg Address at Gettysburg, why he appointed certain generals to certain areas is even very important because you learn that he was not the only one making decisions in the war room.

Why knowing all these things are important is so you can understand why and how the decisions that kept America together were made. There are arguments to say that Pres. lincoln was the greatest President ever, or that Pres. George Washington for fighting for the freedom of the people of the United States of America. Knowing these two presidents is a necessary part of participating in America’s democracy. The events that have been happening in the last couple of weeks since Pres-elect Donald Trump was voted in have been some of the events that these two presidents talked about hundreds of years ago. Pres. G. Washington is quoted saying that a two party system would tear America apart. And Pres. Lincoln asked men to fight and die to keep America under one banner and a one party system.

The only way to actually participate in this conversation that is a part of our current democracy is to be actually knowledgeable about what decisions they made and why not something else. Knowing general history of America is good enough to participate in basic voting. But being able to know why some candidates are actually running for president, and for knowing why presidents in the past ran instead of others. We have a perfect example of why some people run some years instead of others. And why they run for some reasons instead of what they might have said in earlier years. Pres-elect Donald Trump is a very interesting person to win the election, because not only is America in a more democratic swing right now with the years President Obama gave us. But once Donald Trump won the election there were riots, people protesting, minority groups were terrified for their safety in public and even in their home. When Donald Trump was running for president he started off saying very radical ideas like building a wall at the Mexican-American border. He degraded a crippled veteran, he talked down to women. He also found a way to talk about China in every speech no matter the topic of the question. Eventually his speeches swayed more towards what the people wanted to hear and more on topic if asked a question. Although he did switch his speeches up one topic he talked about constantly is how bad of a person Hillary Clinton is. He always brought up the 30,000 deleted emails, and her abandoning American soldiers in Benghazi.

Both the candidates this year have been a complete 180 from the past two campaigns run against each other. But now that we are past the election and we do have a new president in Donald Trump, we as the American people refuse to work together under the one banner that won. After the election there were riots, protests, and people not going to work. Yet after the democrats won the last two years the republicans went back to work, did not riot or protest, they accepted Pres. Obama as their leader and went along with what needed to be done to make America better. Events like these are why knowing more about history is important so you can why people are doing what they are doing, when they are doing it. Knowing these things allows for you and others around you to not repeat history.     

Why We Tell Stories by D.V.

Stories are an essential part of our cultures, societies, and interactions as a species. They provide people a means of conveying information that is immediately graspable and in a format that can be easily translated to different people, so that they may apply the conveyed experience to their own life. There is no example in human cultures throughout our intelligent societies that stories did not play an important role in its development. As a result, it may be thought of that stories are a large reason why Humans have developed such intricate ways of communicating. The Internet is the best example of a way to tell stories to people around the world. We tell stories of important events, not important events, and everything else in between whether it have a purpose or not. Any conversation may be represented as a story in some way. Multi-Billion dollar industries are founded and operate off of telling stories. Video games and movies are stories in different formats. Stories are a driving factor behind our culture as Americans, and our global society as Humans.

Stories spanning many languages, dialects, and cultures often may convey the same information, simply translated to be relevant to its parent region or people. Proverbs translated from ancient and modern Chinese philosophers are similar to those of the Greeks and Middle Eastern, and they still show up today often mutilated on inspirational Facebook and other social media bits. Abrahamic Religion, and every branch and cult that spread from it has been founded on stories, their interpretations, rewriting them, and their distribution to other cultures. Many non-Abrahamic religions have similar stories to convey how to be a productive member in the parent society. There core is the same, it is just what the story is wrapped in that changes its interpretation.

The interpretation of stories is equally as important as how they are told, and the message intended to be conveyed by the writing. Often times the accidental or intentional misrepresentation of the story is insignificant, as we see in white lies, and people boasting to each other about their successes. Sometimes however, it is significant. The mass content and traffic aggregates that base themselves on social media profiles operate with zero journalistic accountability while posing themselves as such: Journalists and News Media Outlets. As a result, these groups or individuals may take real and unbiased events and spin them to their own personal, political, religious, or elitist agenda. Sometimes these stories are completely made up, with zero regard for fact or truthfulness. The content aggregates will steal, upload, or repost work that is not their own, and people connected to them will take it and promote it without a blink of an eye. Maybe this has a significant impact on the average intelligence of a compulsive Facebook user, maybe not, regardless it is an example of the importance and intentional misrepresentation of stories.

Stories are arguably the most dynamic and adaptive culture point that Humans have created. Perhaps why we tell stories is an evolutionary trait. What if our ancestors had a significantly higher chance of death because they did not feel the need to tell their group members about their experiences. By communicating with stories, they may have been able to formulate strategy and practices that would help them survive. When Humans developed this trait, and since it is engrained in our DNA, it is natural that we tell stories. If we did not, then perhaps the world would be a much different place. Social interaction of social creatures through the medium of stories is natural, important, and has great impacts on the direction of Human development.