Learning From Others Essay, Research Paper

Learning From Others

By: Me!

There is something I have observed as I have grown, and that is, if we value our own lives and generations after us, we must learn from others to better our future. There are many things from which we can learn throughout our lives. In particular, we can learn from the past, present, and our future generations.

In the past we have had many horrific tragedies including the Holocaust which occurred during World War II in 1945, and the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. The pain and suffering that the Jewish people had to endure while they were in concentration camps during the Holocaust was immeasurable. They were included in experimental drug testing which had life threatening effects. They had to go through the pain of being separated from their family members and friends. Also, nobody can possibly forget about the Nazi gas chambers which killed millions upon millions of innocent Jewish people. The bombing of Hiroshima was also another terrible tragedy. We can learn from the pain which the people in Hiroshima had to endure. There is not one humane reason why these people had to be bombed with a nuclear device. The only reason America bombed Hiroshima was because Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. It was not self-defence. It was a chain reaction. We, the world as a whole, must never bomb each other with nuclear weapons again. The nuclear weapons we have today are much stronger than the ones used way back in 1945. If this did happen, the result could be the destruction of the entire planet. We are not stupid enough to do that, or are we? Some of us must have learned something from those two mistakes. If nobody did learn anything, then you will be taught right now: We must rethink and reconsider how our actions will affect others, before we carry them out. We must do this with deep thought and concern. If we do this, we can strive to work together for a future which excludes torture, discrimination, and nuclear weapons.

The one thing we can relate most to during present times is our contemporaries. People of the same age can better understand each other because they go through the same things, often at the same time. One of the best examples would be teenagers. They go through so many of the same problems including drinking, smoking, doing drugs, peer pressure, and relationship problems. Speaking from a teenager s perspective, there is one particular incident which comes to mind. I have a friend who drinks a lot, to be more exact, he drinks excessively. We were at a party on a Saturday night. Everybody had been drinking. As the party was coming to an end, I noticed my friend get into the passenger seat of his car. I went over to ask him who was driving. He told me not to worry because a sober friend of his was going to drive him home. I had seen the person he named about a half hour before this and that person was sober, so I felt reassured. However, the next day I learned that my friend was involved in a car accident. It turned out that the person driving my friend home had taken some illegal drugs. This had caused the person to have a slower reaction time and he made a left turn right into an oncoming truck. My friend was crushed by the passenger door. He was killed instantly. I learned a valuable lesson from my friend s death. You must never trust the judgement of someone who has been drinking. I should have taken the responsibility of sending him home in a cab. Hopefully, with our future technology we can create a device to put into cars which tests the drug and alcohol levels of the driver s blood before the car ignition is able to start. This would prevent the injuries and deaths caused by drivers under the influence of drugs or alcohol. It would save many lives.

Lastly, we can all learn a lot from children. In a way, they are our future generations. They have such an innocence which surrounds them compared to elderly people who have had more experience in this world. Children have never been exposed to the cruelty of the real world. At such a young age, they would not know about nuclear bombs, racism, discrimination, violence, and the hatred which exists. They have not yet had exposure to these sorts of evil things which corrupt our society today. On the other hand, our elders, such as our grandparents, can tell us stories about things from the past which they have experienced. They may have been in the war, or perhaps they were part of a demonstration in the seventies. We should listen to both of these generations with careful consideration. Our elders can tell us about mistakes we have made in the past. However, children are very important because by watching children play and interact with each other, we can simplistically view how to interact with each other in a peaceful, kind, and caring manner. The children are our future, therefore we must teach them to keep their positive views and to learn from our past mistakes.

We must combine the knowledge, experiences, opinions, and thoughts of these three generations to better our future society. Hopefully, we will eventually be able to eliminate nuclear weapons. I doubt that there will be anything like the Holocaust in the near future, unless another Hitler comes along. I am sure we can come up with some type of invention to prevent car accidents caused by drivers under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Also, surely we can pay closer attention to the views of our elders and to the innocent ways of children. If we do so, it just might provide us with a much happier, much more peaceful, and content society.