I do not consider myself very well informed about history or especially the details of history, the many actual stories. This probably makes it a good topic to discuss in that I am likely to be more humble than I am discussing epistemology, about which it seems people are in general deliberately clueless. I cannot even get people to define a term like "God" before taking much time debating it.
Nevertheless I think I have some perspective on history which are well justified but which even those with a great command of the detail fail to see. For example, people informed about history often blame ignorance of history on the individuals... after all, they have discovered history, why do their fellow citizen (obviously I'm talking about Americans here, but there is some generality to this in the west. It's just that in the Unisted States of America even intellectuals are only dimly aware of "history").
For example, something I have managed to discover is that even history still teaches us in the US the same false stories we were told at the time, and stories not able to tell this way, like the story of US intervention in the Phillipines. We were told the hole time, and still are, about the US isolationism. The fact is, the people may have been isolationist, but the leaders were not. The Revolutionary was became an indian war, and subsequent to that America and her standing army recreationed in the Carrabean and the Pacific.
American have believed, and believe still, what they were always told at the time, in spite of history intervening with stark revelations which tell a different story, still they believe.
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ReplyDeletePart 1. History is an interesting subject, I agree. I was listening to Zizek recently, who as recently I have decided unlikeable and rather the product of various European ideologies than the revolutionary intellect proponents of those ideologies would like him to be. Those same proponents, by the way, who often fail to judge a person by his national education system, which would seem fairest in numerous respects, rather than by one's own national education system, which as I have observed time and time again leads to stereotypes such as Americans are stupid, know nothing about history or geography or so fourth, as though such were our fault. Blame an interesting idea in and of itself, Zizek was saying - as I had intended on making the point - that Chomsky, who I don't adulate nor always agree with, although dissent would be ironic given that he himself is a dissident, merely describes and lists off and precises upon rather than changing the underlying thought or, getting to the philosophy of the matter, if you like. Zizek seems to have an affected idiosyncracy about him wherein he constantly twitches. He also seems a skilled butcher of the English language, which might have something to do with why he is so extolled in various countries outside the U.S., although there are various circles in Great Britain who find him praise worthy, which I detest.
ReplyDeleteThere is no doubt that Chomsky pads out some of his claims and citations, but something about history I find interesting, something about most subjects, really, is that unless a person dedicates his life to it, or as I said, academia, there will always be subjects of which he knows very little, and in fact ignorance will always loom over him, whether in one life time or ten, far the effect of those things he will never change. I mean, think about a continent like Africa. It is occupied by so poor a population that over half of its inhabitants are under 15. It has been so devastated by outside intervention and occupation and exploitation that it is not even of its own making - every one of its States having been made by outsiders, mostly from central Europe. Prior to Portugal and Holland and later, the greatest empire in the history of the world, Great Britain, Africa had no states. Most people ascribe genocide to Germany; whereas, actually, it originated in South Africa, by way of the British. My point is being reiterated, really. There simply isn't enough time. The standard is inevitably hypocritical and illogical. This idea; this notion that we are supposed to bear given mental contents but not others. Why? Why do people accept this line of thinking? That, if a person doesn't know the name of the principle musuem in New York city, or if a person doesn't know some or other up and coming fact or buzz word, governance now almost as hackneyed a word as they come, metrosexual being to romantic as feminism is to egalitarianism, that, they should feel shame? Not outright, degrading, crying shame, no. But an insinuated tacit shame. One too subtle to be attacked with words and serious criticism and yet too far beyond the penumbra of communication to be imperceptible. I have always marvelled at the standards and criteria people use to control other people. I think it was Plato who said, if you don't study politics, you run the risk of being controlled by the lower classes. And, how right he was. Although I'd just assume replace politics in that quote with philsophy or perhaps critical thinking, it seems all too often that it is our own unquestioned and thus accepted expectations and standards, of which most seem oblivious, that control us.
Part 2. The point I really wanted to touch on, however, was that of memory. Epistemology is an interesting field, I agree. To my mind, intuition is better termed estimatation, and words like "to interpret" are highly undervalued in the currency of most languages. The notion that knowledge must be or can't be or might be shown to be absolutely accurate is such an antiquated preoccupation. If we are acting beings, which indeed we are, knowledge - the sort of which here means, the contents one acquires mentally via the senses, need only satisfy what conclusion satisfies: one's ability to act. To, re-act. But, really, what makes learning subjects like history hard is of course not knowledge or philosphy, religious expurgation aside. Rather, like I was trying to say, memory. Mnemonics. It is so aggravating to learn and then to forget. To be required, as it were, to practice if to possess.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find particularly interesting about history is that it is a rewarded knowledge in most parts of the world. If one studies a field like epistemology, it rarely ever serves him in the same social way that a field like history serves him. People seem to equate national history with national duty. Often, people will reward you in the same tacit way that they would otherwise shame you, should you happen to know your country's history. - Yet another of our unexamined standards that others 'must' live up to. More than history, I find that archeaology, the contents in academic journals specifically, very informative and interesting.