Saturday 29 December 2018

History being constantly reinvented by the modern internet

Lately, I've been realising how humanity is constantly reinventing history (at least in terms of what history means for the future and present). I was always aware this happened, to a degree, but had held at the back of my mind the fanciful idea that there was infact one true history and some people where telling it right and others wrong. This, I now realise, is clearly a nonsense; I'm here to explain why I believe this now nonsense:

The majority of recorded history is, infact, the story of a group of people or some idea of a person and their perspectives on events. Lets look at the item which opened my eyes to the truth, the story of the Treaty of Versailles (an unarguably important event in history) when looking at this event, the story teller (internet Historians) seek to attribute world causes to a small number of individuals who are believed to, and seen to, have huge influence. This in itself is misleading, these individuals are indeed renowned in their respective societies and beyond, but what affect they have on people is down to the people themselve who are making these people fit into their own agendas and beliefs. Putting this another way, its not the President which changes the nation but the nation which changes the President (but of course the President's actions are chosen to engadge the nation).

So, the reality is, life is complicated and diverse and there isn't one simple cause or even set of causes (though they can and do exist, they can't be said to be the cause of the larger outcome only a factor and influence). There is no "true" history beyond observing some event happened with some evidences to show that it happened; What history quickly becomes online is an oportunity for people to make bold claims, the most popular of which, that have the least objection become what is commonally regarded as historic fact.

The problem is, that all history before and after the time and event selected is speculative. As a simple example, if I go into the street and make a speech that the world should be more kind and loving and afterwards the world is generally seen to improve, was that really my doing? or was infact I just stating a truth of the age and due to that evidential truth change occured. Also, even if my inflence is massive meaning I have huge followers, its likley the reason I have huge followers is I'm many things to many people. Meaning I'm just embodying a change or set of changes already in progress.

So, what history becomes is poltitics, litterally.

So far, I've stated something but not really made anything useful out of the observation. So lets see...

How can "history" be better?

Well I would say that we can start by stopping attempting to connect massive complex changes to small numbers of influencial individuals. We can start more admitting that there isn't one true history, only human stories which help us to understand whats happened in the past as a opinion of an author. We can look at the past as events and stories told about the events. We shouldn't even hold viewpoints as to the meaning or causes of events, beyond pointing out influences and likely outcomes. Prehaps proper historians do do exactly that and its just the modern internet era which forgets because people like convinence history. A tale told which allows them to feel informed and happy about being informed without the need to think too much or research.

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