History is a terrible judge.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Speaking of important people, I am reminded of an oft-repeated and wholly invalid principle that time gives us the perspective needed to judge things in a more complete fashion. How this foolishness ever gains credibility is beyond me. It seems to me that in the throes of contemporary events, we are keenly aware of the puppet-nature of mankind, how leaders are driven more than the drivers, and how a multitude of competing influences form and shape a history beyond any conscious or deliberate efforts of single individuals or groups thereof.

The truth is, however, that time is a terrible game of informational attrition. Each passing day sees the fading of countless reams of data and knowledge and memory. As time passes, we get dumber, and to think that historians can levy judgment in any accurate sense with naught but scraps of records and paper is silly. Why do we think this? Why do we even recognize in our own lives this truth, yet ascribe all wisdom to the horribly broken enterprise of history?

It is really rather a terribly circular way of looking at things: those things that don't disappear are the "most important", and the "most important" things are those that happen to survive. Otherwise, why would anyone keep them? We know the answer... our historical record is the product of happenstance. A series of accidents and near-misses. Most of it gets burned up in fires, or soaked by waters, or deteriorated by time and must and fungus. And so we dig and we find a piece of pottery and proclaim, "Here lies the answer!"

Silliness. History is a waste of time. More than that, history is a fiction.

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

There is unfortunately a great deal of truth in this. Much of what we call history is fairy tales for grown-ups. It refers to events done by human beings in the past, human beings different from us today only in having lived 25 years (the minimum cut-off for contemporary events becoming historical) from what is now considered "historical." This reality is too often missed and motivations are attributed to people in the past that are really more like those of bad novels than real, living people.

You're right also that history has a Catch-22 with what is considered "important."

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Its both really. We get released of the current biases in our viewpoint, and we have all the information that is going to come out (Look at the Iraq war now as opposed to when it was Invadin' time) but yes there is also a historical bias to deal with.

[anadinboy.livejournal.com]

they do say the british army is always fully prepared for the war before last lol.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Well, some main principles of historical research theory actually agrees with many of your statements here. One of the main things to remember is that there is no complete way to get an objective and whole truth, and what is left in archival material is not necessarily representative of what is "most important". You (in a general sense) have to look for the gaps and pauses in material and ask why they are there, as well as take into account flawed human oral documentation, speculative sources etc.
History is neither fiction nor truth, it is a speculative research project that will never be finished. But it's not silliness, it is actually just as important as social sciences and political analysis, in the same way as a senior citizen is important in regards to a college student.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

History is a collection of stories told by the winners and/or those who survived the events, sifted through the prism of their own perceptions and biases, and affected by the situation at the time. Anything but the numbers of years in history should be taken with a healthy amount of skepticism. The first question we should ask when reading a piece of historic story is: what was the author hoping to achieve when they wrote that?

The devil was the first Whig

[kgbman.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't go so far as to say that history is a waste of time. Anyone with a lick of sense will admit they don't know everything. Nobody learns anything without the help of those who are older and more experienced. History is learning from those of our elders who happen to be dead.

That's not to say we should take our elders advice at face value. Sometimes their failures and shortcomings can be just as instructive as their successes.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I disagree ;) Too nihilist for me bud!

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Speaking of important people, I am reminded of an oft-repeated and wholly invalid principle that time gives us the perspective needed to judge things in a more complete fashion.

I think we tend to memorialize people after they die because they are no longer in a position to embarrass or injure us.

[lordtwinkie.livejournal.com]

"history is a waste of time"

yea good luck with living your life by that mantra.

History, real Historically researched history done by trained professionals is anything but fiction. I think you are failing to make a distinction between "history" espoused by talking heads and politicians, and history that thats been combed over and dug through and researched throughly, with points of view backed up by real evidence.

The problem with your belief that we are keenly aware of anything fails to recognize the reality that we don't know what the hell is going on until after the fact. thats why hindsight is 20/20 unless you happen to be omniscient, which i doubt you are, in which case you and i aren't even close to being aware of even knowing one half of 1% of the total knowledge and information of the moment.

do you think the world knew what the fuck was going on during the cuban missile crisis, that it situation was defused by a back room deal with the kremlin? fuck no, we didn't find that shit out till much later, thats god damn history at work. what about Thomas Jefferson and John Adams sending each other letters about the size of the American weasel's penis? people didn't know about that shit till later making it fucking history!

a properly trained historian when doing research and reading source documents takes into account who is writing the information, for what purpose, what time period, to what audience, etc. context is king.

honestly your entire argument is an argument for ignorance, you honestly believe that since the time of Herodotus that all of it is total bullshit?

there is really only one fucking word to describe this post


which means

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

Rubbish, good sir! History is no more a waste of time because we don't have a complete picture as astronomy is a waste of time because we don't understand dark matter.