Why I am doing this

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.