The first thing that we were asked when we started college
with history was, what indeed, is history? This very smart person called E.H.
Carr who grew to be one of my favorite historians later wrote a whole book
about it, trying as ever to answer the question.
After three years, I have managed to vaguely surmise thus:
History is a cyclical blob of timey-wimey stuff that keeps meshing and mixing
and producing several timeline possibilities at once, while actually creating
one reality. So while historians will forever debate on the exact combination
of factors that led to a certain event till the last person in line of that
debate will come and say that it was all of them, I am rather content to admit
that we will never know.
While logically it would seem that it should have been
everything, what if it really was a caravan of Arab traders who came and
changed everything? Yes, I understand how that would upset Marxist historians
who would then be inclined to say that the argument is denying such and such
society’s inherent capability for internal change which upsets dialectics
somewhat, but what if, that is what really happened?
So I suppose that it’s a historians job so figure out every
possibility that could have been, and then weigh them against each other to see
what was most likely plausible, even though it may not be anything close to
what really happened because sometimes very strange things happen which defy logic. We will never really know.
And as excruciating as that may be, what does that make
history? Figments of people’s imagination? Stories that grown-up children
playing at detective made up? They all
probably have a go at each un-created timeline, forever unsure of the real one.
This very wishy-washy business is what governments sell everywhere as FACT. They
pass off history as the truth about the past and that gives history power. It’s
a secret weapon, a very shrewd and subtle political one that too.
There is no simple answer to what history is, but history is
not FACT. It cannot be written in stone. The stories change with the
storyteller.
In the past few years, this has been annoying me to no end. Imagine
years of being told that the world is flat so you oughtn’t to go near the edges
or you’ll fall off. So you carefully mark out boundaries of safety and live
convinced within it for years. Except one fine day, you’re told that it really
doesn’t matter because the world is round, and you can really go where you
want.
Whatever we were fed in school, we gullibly accepted without
question. Only to have it all turned around in college. The extent of the lies
still allowed to be believed is so appalling. Of course this raises many other
very disturbing questions, which perhaps I will bring up later if its relevant.
As of now, ahoy objective myth-busting. Of course there are
certain things that can be claimed with a fair bit of certainty, but it is
still only a precious few cases. Our elusive friend perception does guard them
ever so jealously. But we must labour on and pry out as much as can possibly be managed, for c’est la vie.
P.S.: I am merely thinking aloud. Forgive me, should
it ever appear that my understanding is flawed. I am but a confused person
weighing things around my head.
