History shows us that people with a history are anchored and lead happier and more fulfilling lives. History gives us the certainty of life and the tranquility of daily peace.

Life is about evolution. The person you are evolved from a baby. There was no time in your history that you just be. Everything about you was a step by step process from baby to where you are.

Every age is made up by the past age. To pin this down without belaboring the point, the 21st century was made by the 20th century. And the 21st century is the age of suffering, mental health is at its low. The cry is everywhere. Mental illness is the daily news.

The 20th century was remarkably unremarkable age. There was a total abandonment of the appreciation of history and philosophy. The 20th century  saw the birth of psychology. The fact that modern psychology placed sex at the heart of it, there was a stampede of attention to the exclusion of the rest. “Human beings, are essentially sexual” speculated Sigmund Freud.

Sigmund Freud is regarded as the Father of modern psychology. As you probably have heard, Sigmund Freud saw the individual as driven by natural forces that he called Id. The id is the instinct for sex and aggression. To Freud, we all inherited a proclivity to desire sex with every member of the opposite gender in our world, even with our parents and siblings.

The first suppression is the taboo not to have sex with ones parents and siblings (Freud speculated that children do have desire to have sex with their parents and siblings…in his famous concept of oedipal complex Freud says that a girl wants to have sex with her father, knows that the mother does not like it and would kill her so she suppresses that desire and  instead identifies with her mother hence introject social mores and become normal; a boy wants to have sex with his mother and thinks that his father would kill him, so to stay alive he suppresses the desire and identifies with his father and internalizes his father’s values and becomes normal…people’s desire for incest is also tabooed). 

Sigmund Freud died in 1939. Following from Sigmund Freud we have Albert Ellis. Albert Ellis wrote a book in 1958 called Sex Without Guilt. Based on a 1982 professional survey of US and Canadian psychologists, Albert Ellis was considered the second most influential psychotherapist. Psychology Today noted that, “No individual—not even Freud himself—has had a greater impact on modern psychotherapy.”

By the 1960s, Ellis had come to be seen as one of the founders of the American sexual revolution. Albert Ellis speculated that if people can be free from morals life will be paradise on earth. There should be nothing concerning you. Marriage is a responsibility, and it should give way to free love, open love and open marriages. What is called the lifestyle swinging life. That is where we are now.

With the birth of psychology history and philosophy were relegated to the background. Psychology rebuked the past, and sought to disconnect people to some speculated freedom.

In order to really tackle the issue of today, the lack of mental health we ought to resuscitate the appreciation of history above psychological speculations. Solid history gives gravity. We learn well, adapt well and evolve into better humans when we are connected with our roots. We cannot base our lives on experiments and tests. History is a living thing, and it us vital and vitalizing. The lack of history brings in mental illness.

Plato said, let us make solid society, solid society makes solid people and solid people leads solid lives. The lack of gravity in people, (the quality of being solid is not there) is the cause of such surge in mental illnesses. The world, from Europe, to India, to China to America, is drowning in mental illness. Never was there such a time in the history of human beings that the whole world is on the verge of madness.

When we appreciate sound history we develop a healthy community. Since we share the same ancestors that awareness bonds us together as a community. The Bible and other religious records tell us that all human beings emanate from one ancestor. And so if you want to establish peace and sanity among the races then history is a great start.