I have also found that a cure for sinus congestion-induced insomnia is listening to an audiobook of George Orwell's 1984; which, along with listeneng to talk radio against my will all day, is the basis for the following rant. I have the foresight to use spell-check though, so it won't be too bad. Gramatically, I mean. Subject-wise... did I meniton I had Ny-Quil? Ye minions of Xendor, I wonder what miniscule subjects would intrigue me if I did real drugs.
And now for something completely different...
History. It's a funny thing. A class you had for years in school, probably one you dreaded and procrastinated the most with homework. The war of 1812. The Great Depression. World War II. George Washington. Abraham Lincoln. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Stalin. Hitler. Mao.
All these little blurbs floating about in your head from history class, that your brain stubbornly refuses to forget. In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. The Holocaust was bad. The New Deal was good.
Ever stop to think about what history really is?
Probably not. You're a normal person. Bu I'm not, so I'll continue rambling.
History is keeping facts we want, and discarding those we don't. Often, we make up facts to replace those cast aside. In large or small ways, history is as much a work of fiction as any random book on your shelf. Especially if it's a history book.
What strikes me as funny is how historians love to use personal journals as historical references. For one thing, whoever wrote that journal was only writing it for themselves... or if they were writing for others, they skewed the facts even more. I for one know that my journal isn't the most factually accurate nor balanced piece of writing out there. Even if I write about an event moments after it happens, I can't remember everything, and I usually don't write until a day or two after. And, well, I tend to exaggerate. A lot. I like literary drama. The thing is, when I go back and read my journal, exaggeration or no, I can still remember whatever event as if it had just happened. I don't write everything down, just small bits of it, and they trigger the entire memory. Yet if someone else were to read my journal, it would just seem haphazard musings, and could probably be described as angsty (then again, what isn't these days?). But if I were to scribble out something about a historically significant event, or were to become famous, a historian of 25, 50, or 100 years from now would find my journal, call his fellow historians over to marvel at this spectacular discovery, slowly open the yellowed, aging pages, and stare in confusion at what appears to be mad ink scratchings made by a rabid cat.
When they finally figure out that they were holding it upside down, and can find someone that can decipher my atrocious* handwriting, they might find something they deem historically significant.
Suppose, in 50 years, a historian finds my diary and is researching 9/11. It's about as relevant to them as Pearl Harbor is for us today, namely the fact that it is only mentioned by old people, and history textbooks. The journal they find will not be my current wonderful Moleskie notebook, but a dollar-store version, with the generic diary lock that can be picked by any 9-year-old and a paperclip (speaking from experience) and a fluffy kitten on the front. But it's a primary source! ritten at the time! It must be relevant! So the historian opens it up and reads**:
9-11-01AH! HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE RIGHT HERE!!!!! I must publish my findings in an important thing!
Dear Diary,
The World Trade Center fell today. 2 planes were hi-jacked and 1 crashed into each tower. The same thing happened to the Pentagon, except it is still standing. 10,000 dead est. from the World Trade Center.
I am terrified. Who knows whan will happen next?
It seems utterly absurd, and yet that's exactly what they do.
As for the throwing out of facts, don't be surprised if 50 years from now, the same textbook mentioned before reads something like this:
Yes, that twelve-year-old girl was terrified for her life, thinking at any moment more white supremist terrorists could take over another airplane and crash it in her backyard. The entire country was held hostage by this fear of the group of terrorists, calling themselves The Capitalists. Meanwhile, our illustrious hero, Comrade Barack Obama, was working to defeat the leader of this terrorist organization, George Hussein W. Bush.What, haven't you ever read 1984? Hell, haven't you ever read the New York Times? History is only taking the facts, squeezing out the parts the historians don't like, and adding a couple white lies to fill in the gaps. A generation later, no one knows the difference, and those that do and complain are hushed and sent off to assisted living facilities to eat Jell-O and soup and play Bingo.
My point is... heck, do I really need a point? It's time for another dose of Ny-Quil. The first one isn't working fast enough. But my point is that I'm sick of politics and the "history" and precedents we keep hearing about.
Meh. I really should learn to rant in private. 'Scuse me, the medicine cabinet and I have an appointment.
*As has been mentioned, some have complimented the asthetics of my handwriting. Unfortunately, these eople never actually read what I write, so they don't know how illegible it truly is. It's like those letters you see from the 1800's in the background af "historical" documentaries as someone reads them aloud. Oh, sure, someone was able to read them, but they're also paid to decipher hieroglyphics. It's the same thing. Pretty, but as useful as Swahili to a normal person. In any case, this is why I never bothered creating a code to write with.
** Yes, this is my actual diary entry. I found it. It was in my closet along with my other half-finished and barely started journals. Still just as easy to open the lock. And still as pathetically boring as the rest. My journals don't realy get interesting until last year, and even then it's more like "HAHAHA!!! Wow, that's pathetically funny!" kind of interesting.
5 comments:
My journals are pretty much like that too...half-completed, extremely lame, and I'm too lazy to record a detailed or even vague sequence of events.
Anyway! History. I am majoring in it so I have much to say! (No worries, I'm not insulted, since I plan to double-major with philosophy :P) WARNING: This post has no direction and is basically random so read at your own risk.
There's this debate that's been on-going recently about whether history is more like a social science (because of its use of stats, sociology + psych, etc) or if its more like a humanity (because much of it is about interpretation, etc).
Historiography (eg the philosophy/critique of history and sources used in history) is also a 'hot' field in history right now. I find that, like English, history is almost ridiculously inward-looking, but it kind of has to be; if it doesn't police itself, we end up with some wack history.
In the late 1800's history was seen as humankind's story of progression towards the pinnacle of perfection, eg things always get better. Looking back, historians now see that this is/might not be the case, and many historians make a point of trying their best to not make value/moral judgments on the past. Many actually do a good job at this, though books and discussions that do make such judgments are of course more well-known because of the inflammatory nature of such.
When I was writing my primary source analysis essay for my Euro history class, I was thinking that sometimes I felt I was extrapolating way more wildly than was warranted. Of course I had to include historiographical analysis too...anyone looking at a journal of mine for history would have to think about the implications of me being a tree-hugging, immigrant, left-leaning Canadian would have on the content and tone of my writing. Anyway, I mostly felt this way because I wasn't allowed to use any more sources other than that ONE primary source. With a variety and number of sources, a much clearer and more accurate picture can be drawn...i.e. if I took just the New York Times and one of your journals to analyze what September 11, 2001 was like, I'd be 1) very confused and 2) very off the mark. However, with a variety and number of such sources, I'd be far closer to an accurate picture of what happened, reactions to what happened, social movements caused by what happened, etc.
The sacrifice of specificity for generalization is common to all social sciences. You'd be a white, rural (??), Christian (um), right-leaning young adult female living in Michigan, and your opinions would be lumped together with others like you, and contrasted with others unlike you.
When we look back in time at old history books we see things that are way off the mark, and there are also events in history that we don't find out about until much later. History textbooks distill the scope of human history to the significant events but, if you wanted to, there are some VERY specific history books about the most obscure topics (thanks, thousands of academic historians!).
History and historians, like science and scientists, are generally doing their best to head towards a finer perception of reality (yeah getting metaphysical here whut whut). Of course we'll always have the nuts - Zundel and Irving, anyone? - but hindsight is 20/20 blah blah this post is getting long.
Barack Obama has the most unfortunate middle name but you can't blame him for it.
I highly recommend you read Margaret Macmillan's "The Use and Abuse of History".
Ahaha well *cough* my journal doesn't even cover significant world events. :P More like, "---- broke up, I am sad because she is depressed. Life is miserable. Send more chocolate."
But anyhow, I quit agree with Priscilla; the key is to get your information from a number of resources and sort out what seems to be held as "universally" true. *nod*
Ahm, so this is lame, but just thinking back, I thought it would be amusing to see what these theoretical historians, fifty years from now, would think if they compared your journal and mine on Sept. 11! :P (Note: I didn't actually keep a journal then, but if I had, this is what it would have said.)
9/11/01
mum and dad had the tv on all day because two planes crashed into a big building in New York that I didn't know about until today. This meant we couldn't listen to the radio. The people on the tv kept saying the same thing over and over and I wanted to turn it off but mum wouldn't let me, and then finally she went shopping and we listened to the radio.
::::::
HISTORIANS: Clearly, all ten year olds were self absorbed, uneducated, spoiled brats who didn't understand the impact of this grave event.
(...Seriously, that's how I felt that day. I had no idea what had happened, and I didn't see the point of watching the news, 'cause nothing new was being said, and I really wantedt to listen to music.)
*blinks* Not only were there already 3 comments, but one of them could have been its own blog entry. If I knew this was gonna happen, I'd take Ny-Quil more often. Bu I'm better, so I shall respond.
Priscilla: First, I agree that one needs multiple sources for researching history, and as many as possible, on all sides. Even if we know a source is propaganda, there in almost always a grain of truth in it. Reminds me of "Foundation and Earth" by Isaac Asimov. Rather pitiful that I think of a Sci-Fi book, but it's the first thing I thought of that didn't really require research. It's set about 20,000 years in the future, at a point in time where Earth is only a myth, a part of the lore. The only thing is, there's a myth about it on every human-settled world. It has different names, but there are always some small similarities, such as the number of planets in its solar system, or the fact that it became uninhabitable when it became radioactive (a cause covered in another Asimov book). Little things that connected everything. In even the most far-fetched story, there is a grain of truth.
(Side note: At the time of 9/11, I lived in Virginia, less than 10 miles away from the Pentagon. My dad was also in New York and had a flight home scheduled that day. I could see the smoke from the Pentagon from my house. I was scared beyond my wits. Of course, that couldn't be known from reading my journal entry. But I was a helluva lot closer to the action than Michigan. :-) )
(Side note 2: Yes, I don't hold Obama's middle name against him, I'm actually making fun of the conservatives that make it a point to point out his middle name. (Did that sentence make sense? I thought so.) See! I can be neutral! But the point was that history can be drastically skewed, and if you read from only one source, that's all you'll know. Or worse, history is skewed purposefully, all records show that, and no one could ever prove or know differently, a la 1984.)
Trist: If I had lived in Michigan and my dad was home, and I wasn't cursed with what people called "maturity beyond my years" but was really my early-developing cynicism, my reaction would have probably been the same as yours. As it was, I did want to turn off the TV and listen to music, the difference was I also wanted to curl up in a ball hugging my teddy bear. On the bright side, I didn't have to do any schoolwork that day.
The Foundation series! Big ups, yo.
I, too, had *no idea* what the WTC was until 9/11...and I didn't grasp how big of a deal it was until about a couple of years later ;P
Post a Comment