Narrow-mindedness might be a problem for people who don’t read history. Or, if they do, they might still have a provincial historical world view if their only history-reading experience has been in one single version of history, like history textbooks in Chinese schools. In both cases, they tend to be intolerant of other people who they think are “different”. And, by looking only inwardly, they run the risk of losing the historical threads where their own world fits.

Instead, if people understood the historical contexts in which the world has existed, they would have a much clearer and different view on almost everything. Reading history gives people a revealing historical perspective.