Yes, well, any attempt at Plato-to-NATO history is going to have serious holes. With this sort of drive-by history you don't cover enough stuff, regardless of what you do cover, and none of it has enough depth to be meaningful to anybody.
Crash Course World History
- Thread starter Gen.Mannerheim
- Start date
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Not everybody has quite your stringent standards. 
I'm not going by my standards, though, I'm going by the standards of the approximately 100% of the members of my university's history department that hate having to teach those kinds of courses.
My point was more that, although these sort of 'history 100' courses - let alone a series of 10 minute disquisitions on "the stuff from the past some guy on the internet thinks was cool" - are an insult to everybody's intelligence, it's not like there's a good way to do that sort of thing. So criticizing the stuff he included or didn't include is pointless, because either way he's going to miss a lot, not cover anything all that well, and he'll end up emphasizing the things that he thinks are interesting over the things that somebody else thinks are interesting.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Well, I can't say that I feel that my intelligence has been insulted, but perhaps that's just me. I'm happy enough to look at them as a series of mildly informative diversions that might point some kids towards something more substantial, and I can't say that sounds like a particularly ignoble project. 
NedimNapoleon
Weird Little Human
It was meant for the general public that thinks they know a bit about history because they watched a few episodes on "the HISTORY channel" and know who Adolf Hitler is. Anyone with a greater intrigue and understanding of history will not be as amused as watching a 2 hour lecture by a credited professor on lets say the colonization of Africa.....or reading a great article on Rongorongo
Yeah, but that's an entirely different subject from metatron's post, which is what I was talking about.Well, I can't say that I feel that my intelligence has been insulted, but perhaps that's just me. I'm happy enough to look at them as a series of mildly informative diversions that might point some kids towards something more substantial, and I can't say that sounds like a particularly ignoble project.
Obviously general education about history is something that can be reasonably described as a Good Thing. I would say that even as that, these little excretions aren't very good, but I would also have to admit that I don't have the magic answer to how to enlighten the general public about history in a way that is consistent with accepted modern historiography (or at least is not blatantly wrong) and at the same time not irritating or annoying.
Can't be that easily if I haven't flown off the handle at you.
In RL, most people I know have a hard time believing that I can ever actually get angry. Mannerheim's seen it, but he's known me pretty damn well for years.
Zack
99% hot gas
He didn't say anything about anger.
Borachio
Way past lunacy
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2012
- Messages
- 26,698
Thank you so very much for your kind indulgence, sir. Your graciousness is truly astonishing.
Yeah, anger is a completely different subject from irritation and annoyance. No relation, implied linkage, or possible connection there at all; I guess we were just completely talking past each other.
Zack
99% hot gas
If I ask if your wife is annoying, I wouldn't expect a response of "well, I've never beaten her or anything."
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
How much of these have you actually watched, anyway, Dachs? I get that a lot of your dislike of the series is a mixture of aesthetic distaste and a scepticism towards the whole world history framework, which are both fair enough, but you're offering some pretty definite conclusions as to its value based on as far as I can tell fairly fragmentary experience. It kinda feels like you're saying "that book sucks, I know because I once skimmed through it".
And I wasn't talking about beating anybody, either. Do you have a point, other than "Zack can't tell the difference between a raised voice and domestic violence"?
You're right, it is fragmentary. More than just once, though. My first comment was based on the first minute and a half or so of the fall of Rome one, but I've tried to get through most of the others to some degree before concluding "I can't be assed to put up with this" and closing the tab within the first few minutes. They're not supremely annoying and I don't want to give the impression that they're the worst thing ever, because they're not, but I don't care enough about the last eight to ten minutes of a given video to try to figure out whether it's a complete change from the way the first few went.
It's like an annoying song coming on the radio while you're driving. If it's your car and you know where to find better music, you'll change the channel or put in your iPod or whatever rather than have to deal with it. If it's not your car, then it's not so bad that you'll argue with your friend to try to avoid suffering through it, and it's not so bad that it'll ruin your day to listen to it, but it's not very good and you'll be happy when it's over. (Yes, this is a non-generalizable thing. Bite me.)
Zack
99% hot gas
Nope, that was my point exactly.
hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2012
- Messages
- 26,575
Yeah, I can see it from my back patio.
It's great fun to read but can be hard to participate in sometimes. Which isn't necessarily anyone's fault but my own. I just can't stand being so wrong so often.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Just watched the episodes on Islam and the medieval period. Their pandering to islamic zealots (masked under the "look, we're not eurocentric!" approach) is disgusting and lame.
I also don't understand why people have a problem with history as it is taught to Westerners being eurocentric. It's all fine and good to learn about what was happening in the rest of the world, but when you swipe off the entire medieval history of Europe to blabble about how awesome the Caliphs were, something is seriously wrong with your cultural awareness.
And shut up about the Mongols, for heaven's sake!
I also don't understand why people have a problem with history as it is taught to Westerners being eurocentric. It's all fine and good to learn about what was happening in the rest of the world, but when you swipe off the entire medieval history of Europe to blabble about how awesome the Caliphs were, something is seriously wrong with your cultural awareness.
And shut up about the Mongols, for heaven's sake!
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Why? Most of Europe was at periphery of Eurasian trade and diplomacy at that point in history, and the bits that really mattered all that much at the level of a "World History" perspective, Italy and Greece, get discussed in as much detail as the Caliphate. Historians always pick and choose what they're going to emphasise and what they're going to neglect, and unless they're undertaking some particular perspectival project, that generally means emphasising central regions or peoples over peripheral ones. A course in "Medieval British History" will probably spend a lot of time documenting the conflict between the houses of York and Lancaster, but very little documenting the conflict between the clans McHaggis and the O'Bagpipe, despite the latter conflcit being every bit as important from the perspective of those participating in it as in the latter. Certainly you could argue that this reflects the shortcomings of that perspective, which as Dachs has noted are enormous, but how this constitutes an error of "cultural awareness", whatever that means, I don't really know.
I mean, unless you're just using "culture" as a euphemism for "white people", which: yes, obviously, you're you, but let's suspend that for a moment and maybe we'll actually be able to say something halfway worthwhile.
Terxpahseyton
Nobody
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- Sep 9, 2006
- Messages
- 10,759
i just watched the clip on Communist China, where it was said that the Communist "were better in fighting Japanese". I am pretty sure that actually they put the Japanese aggression to use by not fighting them at all but instead concentrating forces on the Chinese authorities. Making the Commies circumstantial allies of Japan against China.
So exactly the opposite of what the video claimed.
All in all I am skeptical if the mixture of knowledge and illusion of knowledge and BS-knowledge the Crash Course provides is preferable to a lack of knowledge.
So exactly the opposite of what the video claimed.
All in all I am skeptical if the mixture of knowledge and illusion of knowledge and BS-knowledge the Crash Course provides is preferable to a lack of knowledge.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Riiiight
Like it or not, most people watching this are Westerners. They *should* know where countries like Germany or France or Britain came from, how they or their previous incarnations came into being; if for nothing else than because of their later role in colonizing 2/3 of the World, including all the glorified places which were so much better and more important than Europe that they'd eventually become its colonies.
This modern trendy non-eurocentric approach to history only makes people more ignorant of the important things, just as the post-modern approach to literary scholarship makes people less aware of what the truly important works are (because we need to redress the White bias by focusing on minority writing 95% of the time). Nevertheless, talking about this with you is like complaining to the Pope about religion, in other words, utterly useless and a colossal waste of time.
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