Taking Sides: Current Events vs. History

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This is a strange tendency I've noticed in myself, and I wonder if anyone else experiences it.

The moment that I see anything (a thread on ILX, a television programme, a book etc.) about History, I am happy to learn about it and gleefully read/watch/participate. Yet if the same documentary principles, applied to Current Events, I shun and feel vaguely uncomfortable about the whole business.

This doesn't make sense, as many of the things which intrigue me about the past - politics, sociology, culture - are the same things which should make Current Events interesting.

Except they don't. They fill me with anxiety and apprehension, and also make me feel somehow stupid or ignorant. Or, worse, confused and frightened and powerless.

Which is ridiculous. I can admit that I know nothing about, say, the English Civil War, and go out and get a book and read about it until I feel satisfied enough to comment. When it comes to, say, the Iraqi War, I find myself confronted with the almost wilful desire to *not* know about it.

Does anyone else suffer from this? Or the reverse? (Are you interested in current events but can't be bothered with history?) Which are you more interested in/comfortable with?

― Kate Kept Me Alive! (kate), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 14:18 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm with you, Kate. To be honest, most of the 20th Century does nothing for me. But I love love love 200 years ago - 700 years ago.

― Markelby (Mark C), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 14:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Is it because history is over, and somehow fixed, and therefore cannot be threatening and scary? Sure, differing interpretations can be made, but the fundamental events themselves will not change much.

Or is it because history is far enough removed to not have that much of an effect on one's immediate anxiety, except as metaphor for current happenings?

― Kate Kept Me Alive! (kate), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 14:23 (twenty-one years ago)

The latter I think - it's a fantasy, but one which is based on documented, real events. It's escapist, it needs exploring - you know that things will be different in any number of fascinating ways.

― Markelby (Mark C), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 14:28 (twenty-one years ago)

but al ot of it isn't fantasy or all that distant. it is and it isn't. with things like the civil war or anything to do with empire, things set in motion then are still going. i've been reading about late victorian england, and the debates then about state funding for religious schools was hardly different from what we have now.

― Miles Finch, Wednesday, 9 February 2005 14:30 (twenty-one years ago)

I think you may be on to something, Miles. A lot of what I read in history, I am able to see as metaphor or foreshadowing of things that are happening now. It's just scary and confusing when it's current events, and I'm better able to understand it. Cavaliers vs. Roundheads: FITE! makes more sense to me than Red States vs. Blue States: FITE! because it isn't so immediate and it isn't so emotionally charged.

― Kate Kept Me Alive! (kate), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 14:32 (twenty-one years ago)

And because you know who wins.

― Markelby (Mark C), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 14:33 (twenty-one years ago)

I think it's more than that.

― Kate Kept Me Alive! (kate), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 14:36 (twenty-one years ago)

you have things like: pre-civil war puritanism in east anglia and lincolnshire and that directly ==>> puritanism in new england (cf arthur miller) via numerous mediations ==>> teh culture warz ov today. so in a sense the war never does end.

― Miles Finch, Wednesday, 9 February 2005 14:38 (twenty-one years ago)

i prefer the future, tho i suppose i am just as guilty of romanticising it as those who profess their love of past periods

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 23:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Miles, "The Cousins' Wars" by Kevin Phillips.

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 23:12 (twenty-one years ago)

wow, cheers, that looks fascinating.

― Miles Finch, Thursday, 10 February 2005 10:02 (twenty-one years ago)

I would take history over current events, but history is starting to piss me off as well. It was great at school - "Here's your book, this is how it happened. You now KNOW STUFF."
These days there's no market for restating known historical facts so what we have is as endless bombardment of books uncovering "the truth" or the "untold story" and shouting "Everything you know is wrong!" at me.

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Thursday, 10 February 2005 10:28 (twenty-one years ago)

yeh, it's like 'Finally! The Truth About The Mayans!', the truth being 'we just don't know'

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Thursday, 10 February 2005 10:51 (twenty-one years ago)

But those books that tell THE TRUTH!!! or THE UNTOLD STORY!!! generally tell more about the biases and projections of the culture doing the examining than the actual period of history being studied. I like the constant churning of debunking and reevaluation, it provides perspective both on the past and the present. Turning over Victorians attitudes towards archeology, for example, tells us a great deal more about the Victorians than it does about the archeology. Which I think it equally worthy of study.

Because what does this say about our *own* biases and interpretation of the events going on Right Now? That's even more up for grabs!

― Kate Kept Me Alive! (kate), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:27 (twenty-one years ago)

One of the things I enjoyed most about studying archaeology was studying the history of the subject itself. Up until carbon-dating was discovered,* the standard theoretical basis for archaeology was the "natives are stupid" theory, essentially that societies can only rarely develop socially or technologically, and almost all of what looks like it might be change or advance is actually just a reflection of large-scale population movement.

For example: "there are three styles of British Iron Age art, so there must have been three mass-migrations from the continent into Britain during the Iron Age" - this genuinely was the standard, accepted history of Britain until at least the 1960s. Part of the reason I enjoyed studying the history of archaeology so much was that it's very easy to write essays which are serious, but still take the piss out of the theories in question.

* and not just carbon dating, but until people realised that most of the carbon dates they were getting were seriously underestimating the actual age of the samples. The people who discovered that sometimes refer to there being two "radiocarbon revolutions": the discovery of the thing itself, and the discovery of how to calibrate its results properly.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:54 (twenty-one years ago)

I quite enjoy getting all Meta- about that aspect of history - the History of History is a fascinating and perplexing subject. There is lots of vagueness but that doesn't bother me.

Yet I find the vagueness of Current Events perplexing in a negative way, that I feel I will never fully understand things, and therefore it's better not to try. Rather than "I will never fully understand that past, but that's OK, I draw comfort from the vagueness."

― Kate Kept Me Alive! (kate), Friday, 11 February 2005 13:16 (twenty-one years ago)

To be honest, it was very interesting to hear about the release of the late-80s and early 90s cabinet papers about the UK joining the ERM yesterday - I loved hearing people talk like historians about events I can (vaguely) remember.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 11 February 2005 13:34 (twenty-one years ago)

What makes history interesting for me is the infinite possibility of interpretations and views. But the people who commission the books and programmes don't see it that way, which is why it's always "the untold truth" etc. It's a shame, because lots of interesting stuff has come out of the relatively recent acknowledgement of hitherto less privileged viewpoints blah blah.

― beanz (beanz), Friday, 11 February 2005 13:43 (twenty-one years ago)

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,5500,1414575,00.html

How did your history education bear up? I studied at degree level and still consider myself ignorant, mainly because there is a real concentration on totalitarian regimes at school.

Now, the chair of this project was actually my history teacher at sixth-form -- and he fucking rocked. Although I must say that 'some pupils taking a "poor view" of German people and culture' was not a consequence I had noticed of the Hitler Studies focus (isn't this quite a New Labour emphasis?).

― Henry Miller, Tuesday, 15 February 2005 10:37 (twenty-one years ago)

My GCSE history course was very limited in scope - essentially, it was Germany from 1914 to 1939.

Before then, though, we studied a huge range of subjects - 19th century America, the Napoleonic wars, the Hundred Years Wars and the Sutton Hoo ship burial are a few of the things I definitely remember. Some were in greater depth than others - Sutton Hoo was a week's classes, 19th century America took almost a year.

Our school made a lot of use of the "let's watch historical movies" school of teaching - America was taught mostly through Alistair Cooke's documentaries, the Robert Redford movie Jeremiah Johnson, and a tedious Civil War drama serial called The Blues And The Grays.

― caitlin (caitlin), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 12:18 (twenty-one years ago)

my next-door-neighbour wz ireton in the cromwell reconstructions on saturday!!

usually i see him pruning the hedge, so this has altered my view of the civil war totally

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 12:20 (twenty-one years ago)

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