Barry Cade wrote:

HAJiME wrote:History is one of those things that people seem to EXPECT people to be interested in, and anyone who doesn't know the basics is an idiot.Why?

I reckon most people are interested in at least some aspects of history, even if not the kind of history they get taught in school. Family history, for instance, is very popular, and it gives people some kind of purchase on the bigger picture (see any episode of 'Who Do You Think You Are?' for instances of this). The kinds of oral histories gathered by researchers like Studs Terkel are endlessly fascinating and useful, although they contain hardly any of the paraphernalia of 'official' history.

Whilst by no means a necessarily negative thing, you just proved me right didn't you?

Passing interest, perhaps and a feeling of "I should know..." but if the circumstance came that we all had to recall something in any great detail, really no. And then we'd all supposedly regret not taking an interest, instead of just being who we are and interested in what we are.

Back to the topic. The history of Alton Towers (a theme park, previously pleasure gardens and house) I know fairly well and I think it'd be worth donating what I knew about Chistlehurst Caves (man made mines near my house dug by the druids, romans and used for air raid shelters in the wars). I tend to know history when it's about something I'm interested in anyway, I just find the whole "you should be interested in the wars because you just should" type of logic mind-numbingly ignorant.

HAJiME wrote:

Barry Cade wrote:

HAJiME wrote:History is one of those things that people seem to EXPECT people to be interested in, and anyone who doesn't know the basics is an idiot.Why?

I reckon most people are interested in at least some aspects of history, even if not the kind of history they get taught in school. Family history, for instance, is very popular, and it gives people some kind of purchase on the bigger picture (see any episode of 'Who Do You Think You Are?' for instances of this). The kinds of oral histories gathered by researchers like Studs Terkel are endlessly fascinating and useful, although they contain hardly any of the paraphernalia of 'official' history.

Whilst by no means a necessarily negative thing, you just proved me right didn't you?

Passing interest, perhaps and a feeling of "I should know..." but if the circumstance came that we all had to recall something in any great detail, really no. And then we'd all supposedly regret not taking an interest, instead of just being who we are and interested in what we are.

This is all a bit vague for me. Which "people" expect others to be interested in history? If you are saying that there are lots of rather pompous characters (including some historians) who look down on people who lack some sort of canonical knowledge of history, then you are undoubtedly right. But you seem to advocate a kind of weak solipsism, outside of history, through which we can attain knowledge of who we are. But absent a historical context, any attempt to define ourselves will always be more partial than it could otherwise be. This doesn't mean that my knowledge of myself will be less sure if I can't list the kings and queens of England in chronological order, but it does mean that I will understand my tastes, beliefs, cultural practices etc more deeply if I attempt to work out where they came from.

I mentioned popular culture in the 1970s. I would argue that in exploring this subject, it is helpful to appreciate the cultural consequences of migration in the 20th century, and in the British context, the ways in which Britain managed its relations with ex-colonial countries following the Second World War. There is no 'me' that is immune to such influences, and historical research is one way to appreciate my own identity more fully.

If not for paleontologists, we might have difficulty even making into the stone age

Seriously, who here knows how to make stone tools?

Barry Cade wrote:

HAJiME wrote:

Barry Cade wrote:

I reckon most people are interested in at least some aspects of history, even if not the kind of history they get taught in school. Family history, for instance, is very popular, and it gives people some kind of purchase on the bigger picture (see any episode of 'Who Do You Think You Are?' for instances of this). The kinds of oral histories gathered by researchers like Studs Terkel are endlessly fascinating and useful, although they contain hardly any of the paraphernalia of 'official' history.

Whilst by no means a necessarily negative thing, you just proved me right didn't you?

Passing interest, perhaps and a feeling of "I should know..." but if the circumstance came that we all had to recall something in any great detail, really no. And then we'd all supposedly regret not taking an interest, instead of just being who we are and interested in what we are.

This is all a bit vague for me. Which "people" expect others to be interested in history? If you are saying that there are lots of rather pompous characters (including some historians) who look down on people who lack some sort of canonical knowledge of history, then you are undoubtedly right. But you seem to advocate a kind of weak solipsism, outside of history, through which we can attain knowledge of who we are. But absent a historical context, any attempt to define ourselves will always be more partial than it could otherwise be. This doesn't mean that my knowledge of myself will be less sure if I can't list the kings and queens of England in chronological order, but it does mean that I will understand my tastes, beliefs, cultural practices etc more deeply if I attempt to work out where they came from.

I mentioned popular culture in the 1970s. I would argue that in exploring this subject, it is helpful to appreciate the cultural consequences of migration in the 20th century, and in the British context, the ways in which Britain managed its relations with ex-colonial countries following the Second World War. There is no 'me' that is immune to such influences, and historical research is one way to appreciate my own identity more fully.

There just seems to be an idea floating around that one should be interested in history, politics, the news... can't think of anything else off the top of my head, but there is. And even people who blatantly have no interest advocate an interest in the "oh i should pay attention to the news" type of crap. If people cared, they would, and my point is that if this thought experiment were a real event tonnes of people would play the "oh I wish I'd payed attention" crap without for a second remembering they didn't give a damn then and why the hell should they now.

You can always argue that any knowledge will influence or lead to a better understanding of yourself, so it's just not relevant. Everything effects us, but if we don't individually notice, it doesn't really matter does it?

HAJiME wrote:You can always argue that any knowledge will influence or lead to a better understanding of yourself, so it's just not relevant. Everything effects us, but if we don't individually notice, it doesn't really matter does it?

Are you really arguing that the only things that matter in our lives are those things we consciously acknowledge as influential? Leaving aside the fact that since Freud came along we have to get used to the fact that not all our motives are conscious, it seems bizarre to suggest that ideologies and beliefs are not shaped by forces that are sometimes invisible to the individual. What we often call 'common sense' is deeply influenced by assumptions about the world we live in that aren't necessarily subjected to rational scrutiny.

Not what I meant at all. No idea how else to word it other that what I've already said... My aggravation is with people pretending they give a shit, or worse moaning about others not giving a shit.

How about a little focus here? World War 2 is all we are trying to reconstruct. What could you contribute from memory?

The Dieppe Raid here, as well as quite a bit of the Army Commando's history.

Teshi wrote:A better thought experiment would be transposition to another planet where everything is genuinely unconnected to the past, because people are right: The amount of history contained in family photos, fiction literature etc. is actually quite profound. So imagine: the history in your head is all the history of your former planet there will ever be.

What do you know?

I was a history/English major so I know a fair bit of quite general information, especially about Western Europe, focusing on England and Canada. I also have some knowledge about the evolution of the human species and our development, I also know something about the History of Science but the rest of my history knowledge is either based on major events or social. My military history before 1900 is very poor.

What is also lacking from my knowledge is chronology. I would be hard pressed to remember dates and I might struggle to set things in the right chronological order, even, unless they were directly related.

For me, the history I have that's uppermost in my mind would be the constant "agon" between social justice/social injustice throughout the millennia. I too, without the documentation directly in front of me, am hard put to recall exact dates (in most cases). But the poignant importance of our species' story is something I've always felt passionate about. -- I certainly plead guilty to being very short-tempered and impatient whenever confronted by an apathetic or blase attitude toward our history, because our history is what reveals the most profound elements in our makeup that make us what/who we are.

There are 32 figures in all whom I can recall off the bat who've been responsible for either truly noble sacrifice for the sake of human happiness and/or mind-boggling cruelty and callousness. I know the rough rudiments of their stories by heart, as well as the most telling ways in which their various stories interact to make one superbly compelling narrative. No one has yet been ambitious or talented enough to pour all these stories into one huge work, either as an epic poem, an epic film (or sequence of filmS), a fictionalized TV series, a series of plays (a la an Aeschylus), or an opera cycle (a la Wagner's Ring cycle). I have no such talent, nor, at my age, would I have enough time left. But if anyone were to try this, it would be the most compelling human story ever told.

Off the top of my head, here's what I can recall. The 32 figures are a mixtures of pluses, minuses and equals. Pluses mean those who advanced humanity forward to a more inclusive and caring ethic, minuses those who brought humanity backward to a cruel level of callousness and sadism, and equals those whose records are mixed:

(In order of appearance)
Mesalim +
Ush -
Enetarzi -
Lugalanda -
Urukagina +
Lugalzagesi -
Sargon =
Moses +
Brhaspati -
Buddha +
Confucius +
Solon+
Critias -
Socrates +
Christ +
Theodosius I -
Mohammed =
Gregory IX -
Cherbury =
Locke +
Meslier -
Jefferson =
Robespierre -
Marx =
Tolstoy +
Stalin -
Gandhi =
Hitler -
Truman =
King +
Mandela +
Bin Laden -

Here's their story as best as I can recall it, with no notes in front of me. What I stress here are the vital ways in which their stories interact with each other:

In ancient Sumeria, Mesalim becomes a peacemaker for Lagash and Umma, even helping to nudge forward the process of establishing worship of Ningirsu in Lagash as an attempted safeguard for peace. But Ush in Umma breaks the peace through the first incursion into Lagash following the treaty. It and later incursions are successfully repelled, but then, Lagash too becomes corrupt, with the usurpation of the priest-king Enetarzi, culminating in the extreme cruelty of Lugalanda. It takes the reformer Urukagina to remind Lagash of what Ningirsu expects of Lagash in caring for its weaker citizens, including the relief of whole families virtually indentured through crushing debts. But the first successful invasion from Umma by Lugalzagesi puts paid to Urukagina's dream, with Lugalzagesi ruthlessly despoiling all of Lagash, after which Sargon in turn invades and conquers the entire region and then crucifies Lugalzagesi at the city gates.

Slavery is maintained in Egypt for the Jews, but Moses inspires his people by reminding them, as Urukagina had, that Yahweh hears the cries of the afflicted; and his people ultimately escape bondage.

Indian worship of Brahma as all-powerful is compromised by a hereditary caste system imposed by the brahmins, which only adds to the cries of the afflicted instead of alleviating them. Brhaspati, in resentment against all the brahmins stand for, then rejects the hereditary caste system and also jettisons not only the brahmin belief in the divine but also the customary obligations toward feeding the indigent and sheltering the traveler, instead emphasizing the claims of those deemed more practical and more powerful in the real world.

Buddha then redresses that by restoring charity as central, although still rejecting the hereditary caste system, while also accepting Brahma as his deity and a moral absolute, but not as a creator or having any omniscience.

During the same period, Confucius, in a way reminiscent of the previous peace efforts of Mesalim, tries to stop the continual feuding in China. He helps introduce "What I do not wish done to me, I will not do to others" into the social equation.

As with Urukagina, Solon too is haunted by the plight of whole families in debt, which impels him to inspire the eventual inauguration of the world's first democracy, located in Athens in ancient Greece.

But Brhaspati's ideas also travel to Greece, where Critias eventually turns the Brhaspati "program" of rejecting the divine and exalting the powerful into a blood-soaked state policy, overturning democracy and initiating the first known peacetime extermination carried out as part of a calculated doctrine.

Although Critias is eventually killed in battle, the posthumous backlash against him and all skeptics ultimately proves fatal to his estranged tutor Socrates, who, ironically, is a believer in the divine, unlike Critias, and claims direct experience of a divine voice in childhood, as well as being one of the few courageous enough to have personally thumbed his nose at Critias and his periodic state lynchings. This doesn't save him from state execution.

The latent ruthlessness in ancient Greece's otherwise enlightened culture is ultimately adopted by its conqueror, Rome, who crushes half the civilized world under its jackboot, including one outpost where a gentle rabbi tries to restore the compact of his ancestor Moses with the afflicted and is executed by the Romans for his efforts. Confucius's central tenet is recalled in Jesus of Nazareth's new take: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Jesus's unjust crucifixion at the city gates contrasts with the infamous Lugalzagesi's deserved end. Some Jesus followers then claim to have seen him alive after his execution, and they inaugurate the Christian faith.

But the gentle legacy of Jesus of Nazareth is perverted by Theodosius 1, who changes his predecessor Constantine's hands-off policy towards alternate houses of worship and instead initiates wholesale destruction of such temples. He issues decrees making Christianity a state religion, with all other forms of worship criminalized, including traditional pagan rituals inside one's private home. He is also persuaded by Ambrose to go easy on a Bishop who's incited a mob to destroy a Jewish synagogue. His reign marks the virtual introduction of a jackboot of conformity into Christian mores.

The somewhat checkered career of Mohammed, beginning in periodic raids and military clashes with various tribes, in which even helpless prisoners are put to death by the hundreds, culminates in a renunciation of all further violence, with Mohammed abruptly traveling through the whole dangerous region with no weapons at all in a dedicated attempt to establish peace among the tribes, in a manner strongly reminiscent of Mesalim and Confucius. Islam starts with Mohammed.

Pope Gregory IX makes the persecution of Jews official, institutes the Inquisition, and issues a declaration sanctioning slavery as Yahweh's plan, thus facilitating slavery's export well beyond Europe and ultimately into the New World in 1619. A doctrine of racism is then developed to justify the perpetuation of New World slavery for the ensuing two hundred years.

After all this, an unsurprising rejection of Western Christian institutions culminates in Lord Cherbury's Deism and the subsequent calls by John Locke for life and liberty for all. Soon after, a bitterly disillusioned clergyman, Jean Meslier, calls for rejection of any concept of the divine and the collective extermination of all priests and the entire nobility.

Locke's and Meslier's two different perspectives later play out on the political stage, first at the American Revolution against the British empire with Jefferson's adoption, partly inspired by the example of ancient Athens' democracy, of Locke's life and liberty for all, and then at the French Revolution with Robespierre's adoption of Meslier's exterminationist "program", although Robespierre, in rejecting Meslier's atheism, is almost as ruthless in cracking down on all atheists.

The concept of social justice eventually gains greater currency through the examples of the American and French Revolutions. Karl Marx calls for the emancipation of the masses against an impervious capitalist class. And Leo Tolstoy dedicates his final years to a philosophy of non-violence.

While both philosophies are well-intentioned, they eventually play out in the next century with starkly different results. The Marxist dream is subverted by Stalin and his gruesome gulags, but Tolstoy inspires the non-violent movement by Gandhi against the oppression of the very same British empire that Jefferson fought against.

Oppression by Britain and others over a defeated Germany sews the seeds for the horrors of Hitler's Nazism and the extermination of six million Jews. In the ensuing struggle against the Axis powers, Truman yields to the temptation of gratuitously dropping a second atom bomb on Nagasaki even though a final surrender by the last holdout, Japan, is now imminent.

Racism is still alive and well even after slavery's official demise, and it takes the non-violent example of Martin Luther King, Jr., following in Jesus's and Gandhi's footsteps, to break the back of the Jim Crowe laws. Similarly, after much suffering, Nelson Mandela, a victim of and a struggler against the racism of apartheid in South Africa, rises above the violence of his time and, once in power, forgives his oppressors, aiming to make peace between enemies, like Mesalim, as well as emancipate the afflicted from their suffering, like Urukagina.

However, Urukagina's nemesis Lugalzagesi, and Lugalzagesi's scorched earth cruelty in Lagash, is recalled, when Osama Bin Laden, a follower of Islam who ignores Mohammed's ultimate legacy as a peacemaker, commits genocide in Pennsylvania, New York, Washington, Bali, London, Madrid, and elsewhere. He ends up gunned down by a detachment of Navy seals in 2011.

These are the essentials of our species' story, and it is hard for me to imagine any other chronicle that combines so much that is both inspirational and deeply sad at the same time. I sometimes wonder if, with the triple threat of free-lance use of WMDs, polar warming, and/or overpopulation, we may have arrived near the end of our story.

Stein

Wonderful. I would be interested in further references re. Muhammed as an an eventual peace-maker though.

cursuswalker wrote:Wonderful. I would be interested in further references re. Muhammed as an an eventual peace-maker though.

Ca. 630 or so, in returning to Mecca, after a long time spent in Medina, where he had developed a strong following, he instructed his followers that they were all to proceed with him to Mecca without weapons, despite Mecca having become the most dangerous place for Mohammed, because all of his most settled enemies were there. By encamping outside Mecca and keeping his followers on a tight leash, he was able to pull off a remarkable treaty with his worst enemies inside the city. This showed a pretty remarkable display of courage and a genuine desire to stop the continual feuding once and for all. By this point, Mohammed had already gained the upper hand because the constant battles and raids outside Medina had only strengthened his following. So he could easily have strung things out that way, but didn't. He simply preferred to be at peace. So even though no one was clamoring for peace, he opted for it out of the blue, taking the risky unarmed trip back to Mecca over some strenuous objections from his closest advisers. He ignored them and the rest is history: Not only did he make peace with his bitterest enemies, but he helped initiate a process that ultimately led to a lessening of general tension throughout the region.

One can certainly argue over whether or not this exercise in (risky) peacemaking entirely ameliorates the other things that Mohammed had done earlier. As I previously wrote, the record is certainly a checkered one. But among the other chieftains of his time and place, he was relatively enlightened in having risked this extraordinary peace gesture at all. No one else back then seems to have had that degree of moral courage. Bottom line: You note that I do give Mohammed an "=" in my previous post and not a "+", because the previous abuses cannot be ignored. It's only because his eventual peace efforts helped make life better and safer for thousands of the people living there that his peace gesture helps raise him, in my estimation, from a "-" to an "=".

Stein

Stein, you redrew my attention to this thread and I have a related thought based on my scenario.

What this thought experiment does is actually present a pre-literate society's method of maintaining history. My memories of the history are undoubtedly not as detailed or realistic as they would be written down a book. Other people's memory of important figures and occurances would not quite match up with my memories.

How long do you think it would take before the stories we tell would get warped?

Slavery is maintained in Egypt for the Jews, but Moses inspires his people by reminding them, as Urukagina had, that Yahweh hears the cries of the afflicted; and his people ultimately escape bondage.

This is, for example, not the way I would tell the Moses story at all and certainly not message I would draw from it. When I taught this story in class, I always included the plagues and the death of the first born of all Egyptians especially. That was not Moses' fault in the story but he was certainly making such a slaughter possible. Sure, in the story he is a freedom fighter seeking freedom for a group of people which is without doubt a noble cause, but in modern sensibilities he is no Martin Luther King Jr.

If we remember that the story of Moses is, if it is based on any level of reality, was certainly passed down orally, and contradictorially before it was written down by one guy somewhere is warped beyond recognition by both forgotten detail and individual interpretation.

As a result, all our history on this planet would be similarly warped, modified to tell a better story and be more memorable. For example, witness the number of "list plots" that oral stories seem to have, because it's easier to remember things when they are part of a list.

History, shmistory...

I could really contribute. I could recreated The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from memory!

Hell, I can barely remember what I did yesterday. I wouldn't be much help to humanity.....just like now

Stein wrote:

For me, the history I have that's uppermost in my mind would be the constant "agon" between social justice/social injustice throughout the millennia.

I wish people wouldn't use Greek terms needlessly. It's terribly pretentious. I'm not sure the notion of "social justice" is even comprehensible in ancient societies, either.

trubble76 wrote:Hell, I can barely remember what I did yesterday. I wouldn't be much help to humanity.....just like now

Nope, nor would I

Paula wrote:

trubble76 wrote:Hell, I can barely remember what I did yesterday. I wouldn't be much help to humanity.....just like now

Nope, nor would I

We could just help out in the background, run the tea-trolley or something

cursuswalker wrote:I would write a treatise on megalithic sites in Southern England.

We could collaborate. Indeed, I have a pretty good knowledge of megalithic sites all over the British Isles.