Don't throw out that old guide book...

THE BIG IDEA 60 seconds to change the world

Can a simple idea help make the world a better place? Each week we ask a guest to outline an idea to improve all our lives. Here, author Vitali Vitaliev says that we should all start using old guide books to help us understand our reality better.

I don't remember who said history repeats itself but every time it does so, the price goes up.

I think one of the main reasons for human kinds' problems is that we don't learn from history and we don't look back often enough.

What I suggest is that we throw out all modern guide books and gazetteers, and start travelling the world, using exclusively guide books and gazetteers that are at least a hundred years old.

FROM BBC WORLD SERVICE More from The Forum Download the 60 Second Podcast Are the old ones the best ones?

It's amazing what power, these seemingly dry facts and figures have.

I compare them to an ossified time carcass, which everyone is welcome to feel with his or her own imagination.

It gives you a beautiful perspective of where exactly you stand in time and without this scale of comparison, we will never realise where exactly we are.

Have we progressed or have we regressed?

I think that if you do start using old guide books, it will help us to understand our reality better.

Vitali Vitaliev is a Ukrainian-born writer on enclaves, which can be mini-states or isolated parts of nation states.

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