Historical Study, Value or Myth?

It's crazy to do two posts in one day but my mind is overflowing with what I've seen in the last few days and how I need to document it, so I decided to parse it up. This is the second parse (I know I'm not using this word appropriately but I like the sound of it so, tough.)

This is Andy Warhol's version of what Mt. Vesuvius, found in the south of Italy, must have looked like as it spewed lava and ash over the countryside over 2,000 years ago. Of course, no one will ever know what it actually looked like because all the eye witnesses (or at least those in Pompeii) perished under tons of ash. Doesn't it always seem strange how something that weighs nothing (meaning ash) can actually weigh tons if there is enough of it? Anyway, there was enough of it to completely cover this community for centuries. That is until someone began the long, arduous process of digging it out and restoring everything to the extent possible.

Just imagine, everything you are going to see here was completely buried and hidden (and protected) from the elements for all this time.
This leads me to wonder, what do we really learn by uncovering such a civilization? We appear to continue to go through all the same self-destructive tendencies regardless of how much we study our past. How much smarter does it really make us to study history? How has it changed our tendencies to hate and to fight and to act out the perverse sides of our human nature?

This is the point where I would like to hand this essay assignment to my college Western Civ class just to see if anyone has a thread of a good idea on this subject. Are we missing the boat because with all our teaching of the classical studies, we have missed the point by not teaching tolerance, respect and integrity? I realize this kind of teaching begins at home but it feels a little chicken and eggy if there is no reinforcement of these aspects of character in our education process. I won't even go down the television or Internet path.

I realize you could say, what has all this to do with Pompeii and its destruction by nature? So let me ask the question, just how different were the basics of life 2,000 years ago? Was there competition for power, was there envy of each other's possessions, was there a driving need to be a success (whatever that meant or means), were there political factions in all levels of the society with so much intolerance of others based on "religious" convictions, and most of all, was there a self-assurance of man's dominance over nature? I'm referring to that need to tempt nature when we truly are at its mercy, regardless of the extent of our research and study.

OK, I've had my say...