How do you view history?

[onejayhawk]

Metaphorically speaking, how would you describe the flow of human events, "history for short? What is its nature and attributes? Is it (would it be) easily changed by small events, or does it roll with massive momentum, crushing all but the most subtle of diversions?

To illustrate a couple of answers, you could view history as a river, which will sumply flow over or around most objects. Or you could view it as a minefield, where any point could produce dramatic change? Is the butterfly effect real? Must Edith Keeler die?

J

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

"History is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once."

 

[sabo]

"History is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once."

Good one Cheeze, or how about.. 'history is a way to show us the mistakes we'll make in the future'

 

[Gilder]

It happened.

That's sums it up nicely. If you get what I'm hinting at.

 

[aronnax]

History, is a book of errors.

 

[Junglecutter]

History gets boring as time goes on.

 

[scy12]

History is a glass i look in and often stay and wonder at it's most beautiful marvels . Sometimes i try not to be blinded by the shining and find out what really is in the glass rather than what it seems.

 

[Provolution]

History is written by the victors.

 

[Nylan]

History is the record of mankind's past mistakes, an invaluable asset that the majority of the world will ignore and repeat...which is why history is boring to some people. It is repetitive because people don't learn from it.

 

[firecoder]

history is a everlasting candle,a neverending (flow of human events)as quoted.

 

[Verbose]

Walter Benjamin, "On the Concept of History":

A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

 

[Verbose]

History is written by the victors.

Walter Bejamin, "On the Concept of History" again:

VI
To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. The danger affects both the content of the tradition and its receivers. The same threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.

Of course, I'm personally neither a historical metarialist like Benjamin was, or a Jewish mystic, like he also was (for one I would never be able to combine them like he did), but I do like his way of putting these things.

 

[xfactor99]

We study history in present day in order to better understand the future.

Or at least in theory, for in practice the study of history can be nothing more than the rote memorization of dates and the imposition of significant details without a proper context for applying the lessons illustrated by history.

 

[Emperor2]

A quote from myself:

"If someone were to put all of human history into a book, it would be the greatest horror novel ever written."

(I know that that has been done, the first 12 words are more of a set up for the general idea that human history is basically a horror story.)

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

History IMO is a series of repeating mistakes, some big some small, mainly ruled and decided on by a small % of the worlds pop.

Even then I enjoy studying history.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Good one Cheeze, or how about.. 'history is a way to show us the mistakes we'll make in the future'

"History is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once."

Wow, I definitely do NOT remember posting that. At all. Ever.

 

[Mirc]

Someone hacked into your account?

 

[Darth_Pugwash]

How about:

"Geography makes history"

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Someone hacked into your account?

Well, it was posted at 2:45 AM on Saturday. I was both very drunk and very tired about that time.

I've got another quote, though:

"The only thing we learn from History is that people don't learn from History."

 

[Pokurcz]

Lately my ideological self has gotten quite a bashing when it comes to history and all the different versions of the same events that go around in different countries.

It has taken a lot of time to get an opening in the shroud of naiveté for even though one has constantly been served truths like "History is written by the victors" the actual reality and complexity of it all has hidden itself inside itself for years.

Suddenly meditation seems very logical and tempting.