UPDATE: ok, this diary didn’t quite go as planned, and getting distracted while writing i never got to the point that had prompted me to write it. i’m going to leave it as is and get back to that unwritten point later. read it for what it’s worth.
Hello again. Thanks to everyone for making the last diary so interesting to participate in. It’s always neat to see other conversations develop in a diary that you’ve written.
Ok, it’s not always interesting… or rather, sometimes it’s not only interesting, but tedious and irritating. It depends, I guess, on what sort of thing you’re really into.
Which brings me to the subject of this second diary, titled:
What’s the Point of Knowing History? Part 2 Section 1: Finding your Place
I want to deal with the point that SallyCat raised, because I think that inside her rather rigid insistence she had one. Her point, in fact, was bascially an echo of the title of my diary.
To ask what the point of something is to ask what is the purpose in it. Where I disagree with Sally is in the notion that there is a single correct frame of history that is integrated. The Former of Forms is Formless, as the taoists say. Or rather – as a great lover of the God Emperor of DUNE – I’ll entertain the notion that there is a true unified view of history. I just don’t think any of us here know it.
I certainly dont. Do you?
SallyCat, if you’re lurking out there, I want to explain again why it seemed to me that you were encountering so much resistence to what you were saying. And I want to do so because it bears directly on the point I’m trying to make.
If you insist that there is a true integrated view of history, then it falls upon you to explain what that view is. To simply insist that such a view exists, and that therefore lists of disconnected facts are irrelevent, establishes a position that cannot in any way be engaged.
If, on the other hand, you were to take upon yourself the task of explaining what the Grand Unified Theory of History is, then you would both give something to the discussion and open yourself to the possibility of having your own view changed.
(You seemed to me, rather, to be passionately advocating for a collective view of history while at the same time opposed for some reason to any process toward getting there. For you, apparently, the process has ceased. You’ve seen all the lists you need to see, and arrived at a sufficiently encompassing integration of History to become positively active in the world. Good for you, to the extent that that’s true. Why, though, do you insist upon denying others their process? If it’s because they’re indulging in the wrong sort of process, then do tell what the right sort is.)
To give of one’s perspective while remaining open to having it changed is just good manners.
I think DailyKos is well demonstrating where an absence of good manners gets you: eventually, if the condition persists long enough, into the pages of Newsweek. It might, in other words, make you popular and powerful, but it’ll never make your fair and just and honorable. These seems exactly the great contest within civilization, and so history.
Which side are you on? A Democrat, a Republican… Are you part of the problem, or the solution?
Personally, I’m guessing, for me, both and neither.
HENCE, I hereby found a third and fourth political party: The Both and Neither Party.
Our Slogan
Are you lost?
Our Four Credos
- It’s not about the party, it’s about the country.
- It’s not about the country, it’s about the world.
- It’s not about the world, it’s about you.
- It’s not about you, it’s about the party.
Our Official Greeting
Are you with me and against me?
Why not call it the “F.U.L.’S.” Party? (pronounced, Fool’s Party).
Short for;
“F”ailures
“U”seless
“L”oser’s
and
“S”tupid
In todays hot entertainment enviroment this would be a winner considering the current administrations past and recent activities.
This way whenever something goes wrong the standard answer instead of “No Comment” can be
“What did you expect F.U.L.S. to do?”
Other standard answer to those awkward questions can range a whole gambit of entertaining slogans, questions and answers like;
What’s good is government without a few F.U.L.S.?
Only F.U.L.S. would tell the truth!
America can count on F.U.L.S. to do what F.U.L.S. do best.
So on and so forth.
Free free to jump on the bandwagon with a slogan or what could be your favorite F.U.L.S. Party talking point.
no, thanks. i think you’ve got that party covered.
enjoy.
So much for humor these days.
it was a bit harsh, as humor goes. think about it.
See, you can toss around new idea’s that reflect a certain viewpoint on reality that everyone is unwilling to face.
No one laughs when you hit the nail right on the head because it hurts too much to admit that this reality truely exists.
Harsh? Not really. It just hurts more than it should because American Politics is filled with the F.U.L.S. who only know how to destroy in the name of creating a better world for all to live in.
How this destroy to create thing is supposed to work is of course is never explained.
not quite. the harsh part was saying “here’s a name for your party…”
if you’d said, “I want to announce the founding of my own party…” then have at. ridicule away.
but, if i say, “i’m forming a group called The Fraternal Order of the Swift and Discriminating Cougar,” and you reply, “how about just calling it The Fucktards,” well don’t be too surprised if i’m not amused by your incisive wit.
If this is an example of what you consider “harsh” then it’s your problem not mine.
Have you ever wondered why Simon is considered so “harsh” on the people who audition for American Idol?
to Sally Cat. It has been my experience that people preach to others what they most need to learn.
check your email. 🙂
ok, then, why not help me out by explaining which part of my sermon i should reflect upon?
think about it: we’re always here on this board ‘preaching’ to one another. we write comments, we respond. we mull over arguments and write diaries prompted by comments. so, yeah, obviously a good part of this diary is directed at SallyCat, in continuation of a discusion we were having yesterday.
as i wrote in the update, the diary didn’t get to where i was going, and so the context of my continuation of the exchange with SallyCat is largely absent. it’s a flaw in the diary. still, if you have a specific point, i’d be curious to hear it.
i said a very specific thing to SallyCat. namely, that if she thinks she has the integrated view of history, then share it. are you saying, then, that i ought to share more of my own view? if you are, then i completely agree that that’s something i most need to learn. i don’t really have a grasp on what my own view is. it’s in process… but yeah, i need to devote more energy, more consistently, to that process.
if you’re referring specifically to something else, then do tell. if you’re just handing out general truisms… well, mission accomplished.
I’ll play.
I think the word integrated is both accurate and confusing. And I agree with you that it is impossible to see and understand actions completely and fully – everyone has their story. And the threads of history are often convoluted and tangled – and unknown. Isn’t it the “winners,” or is it “survivors,” who write history?
I would like to substitute context for integrated.
I can give a list of some actions from my driving history:
I have broken laws of the highway. That would make me a criminal.
Now I can explain that each of these criminal actions occurred in a context. There were reasons they seemed like the best action to take. These are the justifications for the above actions:
Now what gets into the mix of analysis is when I believe and say, “I am a law abiding citizen.” I might not be too pleased to be called a criminal.
But it can get even more convoluted.
What if a person went faster than the speed limit and through a red light because they were rushing a kiddo with a broken arm to the hospital?
Why, then, we might consider their actions heroic. We might set aside the rule of law because the context shows a greater need than following the law.
This is how U.S. history is often presented, i.e., the rule of law may have been broken, but the intention was good because of the context.
Going back to the criminal, yet heroic driver, what if we discover in talking with the kid that the arm was broken by the driver? Or maybe the x-ray technician and doctor wonder about the type of break and begin to question the driver? We might need to explore how that happened. An accident? On purpose, in a fit of anger?
And the context changes again because we are given different perspectives.
This is what I find happening with my understanding of U.S. actions: law abiding – no, criminal – criminal, maybe, but heroic and justifiable – maybe, just criminal. All the sacrifices, all the destruction, all the losses of regular people – the “little” people, the “masses” – all the manipulations and deceptions practiced in-country and around the world…it is difficult to open one’s mind to it, cause the heart begins to break…at least mine does.
As to Dune, I read it so long ago. What I recall most vividly was to survive the sands of Dune, one must break the pattern of walking. Maybe that is what we need to do too, break the patterns of history to survive.
great comment. thanks.
What a great observation.
Context is history. Context is story. Context is life.
Think of how much more descriptive and vivid your explanation of each behavior was.
Having more information allows us to assess the situation and make our decisions on them verses the black and white choices of the behavior as a simple concept.
Just look at what context gives us when we talk of the Indians.
John Wayne:
But my understanding, a reason I asked my ex-wife to do the talking to our kids about thanksgiving was that my story would go something like this:
k9disc:
Those are descriptions devoid of context. I believe that John Wayne has less context than k9disc in these two viewpoints, but they are very shallow.
The more context we get, the better informed we are.
We go from idolizing the Robber Barons: Carnegie and Rockefeller and Railroad Tycoons to distrusting them, as more of the context is exposed: inside deals, bribes, human rights issues. The more flesh that is added to the history, the more clear things become.
I think there are a lot of people that are never offered any context. There are people who don’t care about context; can’t be burdened by all the thinking. There are people that get caught up in one little piece of the context taht they miss all the rest.
So many problems with trying to convey context.
What to Do?
I think the best path right now is to frame history to our advantage, just like the right does. We need to activate a concept of Common Good and Shared Responsibility, and we need to demonize Greed.
Pump up the populists, and blame the Robber Barons. We need it.
Civic Duty to clean up the environment. Make polluters pay.
Healthcare for everyone. Make drug advertising illegal.
I think we should place everything in that context where at all possible, and we should do it all the time.
Once we get that problem fixed, and have a say in our government again we can
Can we develop some seemingly innocuous situations and add context to make it offensive?
I think so.
Can we outline a horrible situation, add some context to myth and legend to try to point out a different understanding? I think so.
It is basically humor: leading them down a path and having them pop up in an entirely different place. It’s the disconnect that is funny.
Three guys walk into a bar… one ducked. badum bum! That kind of thing. Except the end result is not funny. It is sobering.
Immigration Status Quo = Cheap Labor
Welfare to work = Cheap Labor
Free Trade = Cheap Labor
Compete with China = Cheap Labor Race to the Bottom
Small Government = Cheap Labor
Paint all of these in terms of 3 men walk into a bar… one ducked.
Compete With China
The Chinese worker makes $2/day. They have no homes, are hired and fired at will, work 7 days a week, are kidnapped and traded as slaves, and just altogether have no rights.
The American worker makes $5 /hour minimum, has some human rights, has a vested interest in the well being of his country and community, and can participate in government.
Who is going to win that competition? What company is going to hire people at 20 times the cost? That’s before taxes. Who is going to win the Cheap Labor Race to the Bottom?
Free markets are going to kill us.
i appreciate your focusing on the issue of context. the question i’m really asking is what is the proper context for viewing history? and by proper, i really just mean most useful, or most productive of health.
in the diary above, i mention the God Emperor of DUNE for exactly this reason. in that story, the young Leto is force-fed an hallucinogen for an extended period of time. this throws him into what you might call a deep meditation on the problem of conscience. he is forced, in short, to arrive at an integrated view of not just his own history, but through the remains of his ancestors without and within, human history. in the book, he accomplishes this with the aid of a distant ancestor, a Pharoah from Ancient Egypt.
details of that story aside, many of us find ourselves faced with a similar task. one of the primary functions of political parties and ideologies is to order history for us. in subscribing to a group we are spared some of the burden of making sense of civilization. a good thing, and yet it’s clear that the popular frameworks are highly fictional, in that they ignore what some might call Real History. the negative context has been erased, and the framework is mostly a sort of wishful thinking that helps people avoid awareness of horror (which is then projected onto external villians).
the problem with stepping outside these mass illusions is that we are then personally confronted again with the task of making sense of history – or, again, deep meditation on the problem of conscience. as in the DUNE books, this deep meditation is profoundly dangerous, given how capable the problem is of overwhelming the mind.
we are, then, in a sense stuck between a rock (the illusory, projection-prone, nature of the mass model) and a hard place (the difficulty of arriving at an individual view). which gets to the point wherein i agree with what SallyCat was saying: what do we do with knowledge of the catalog of sins? how do we integrate it? at what point should we even try?
I guess I can’t relate to the point you’re trying to make because I don’t find contemplating the horrors of history too taxing or dangerous to the mind. It’s just life. Lions kill deer for food. Humans do evil things to each other for greed. There’s something very natural, horribly natural, ugly but rather simple about it all.
The weird and wonderful thing is that, throughout history, there have been these small groups of individuals who have stood up and cried foul, or the emperor is naked, or whatever the rallying cry of the moment, and changed the course of history. I want to be one of those people, to associate with those small groups of people. THAT is where the real action on the planet is at. And those are some of the best people I have ever met – those fighting that fight, on so many fronts.
So in part, the reason to study Real History is to be able to identify those people who really are beacons of light in the world, to support them, to defend them, posthumously or in present time, so that you can help that good work get done.
It doesn’t have to take all your time or effort. But it does involve sacrifice, and everyone has to work with their own conscience re that one, re how much sacrifice is “enough” to know you are not just simply doing more good than bad on the planet, but living up to your potential as a leader in goodness, so to speak….
I was going to say something like this, as I just can’t grasp this esoteric historical pursuit.
The relationship of context struck me though, so I ran with it.
I think that it is important to look towards today for extra hints of history. The same kinds of naked power grabs, monstrous violence, human beings as trash and resources, have happened throughout history, and they will happen again.
That is what leads me to believe that my version of history, while surely not perfect, is quite a bit more clear and most likely more realistic than the stuff in schoolbooks.
Interesting topic.
Thanks Simon, I’m sorry I don’t get it.
no need to apologize. i appreciate the different perspectives, and
will endeavor to clarify so far as i’m able in the future.
The weird and wonderful thing is that, throughout history, there have been these small groups of individuals who have stood up and cried foul, or the emperor is naked, or whatever the rallying cry of the moment, and changed the course of history. I want to be one of those people, to associate with those small groups of people. THAT is where the real action on the planet is at. And those are some of the best people I have ever met – those fighting that fight, on so many fronts.
This has always been a roadblock for me to accept when people try to say that “such and such was the right thing to do, or was thought the right thing to do within the context of the time.” Or “you can’t judge past actions by today’s standards” and so on. Used in the context of justifying… well not really justifying, but excusing or explaining in some way slavery or genocide or war or other oppressions.
If that were the case, there would not have been these small groups of individuals who stood up and cried foul (and were, most times, not listened to). Often it’s not what is right or wrong or standard that is the issue – just what one can get away with.
All this reminds me of the physicist who fights creationism taught as science and goes around explaining to people how it is that science is different from religion. In a nutshell this is his story.
Theories of Science only have value to the extend they can be rigorously and repeatedly verified by well described experiments. So any thought claiming to explain the workings of our physical environment has to be expressed in a clearly defined context and describes quantifiable actions on objects existing in that context. Theories can be supplanted by grander theories. These theories need bigger contexts, but these contexts contain the old contexts and the theories are consistent with the old theories. So scientists insist a priori that their view of the ‘history of science’ is integrated.
A few hundred years ago there wasn’t really any culture of science. Science is hard because our minds are not designed to do science. Our brains are optimized to survive in groups of a few hundred people in the prairie or the forest. To effectively operate as a group a common language and culture or sets of beliefs is needed. It doesn’t matter much what language or culture or beliefs as long as they are shared by everybody. The groups understanding of their environment and themselves, their view of history, constitutes their culture and beliefs. To them their view of history seems integrated and harmonious. But they may encounter different groups or be forced into new environments and have to change their beliefs/culture. They are forced to fight for their old beliefs or adopt a new or modified set of beliefs. There will be non-believers, evil people that are killing you or that have to be killed. There will be no right or wrong until there is a new dominant belief. There is no integrated view of history for a while.
This is of course were we are. We may be agonizing over the carnage spreading around us, but that’s not where our focus should be. We should focus on what elements of our set of beliefs are core, what should change to make our core beliefs stand up to assault. Who is attacking us and why. Then we’ll know what we fight for and we will be willing to sacrifice.