06 June 20XX +1
My Dear Lucilius:
As I was working in the garden today, my mind turned to civil wars.
I am sure I arrived here mostly by the recent outlying attacks and the even more recent sighting. That said, I do not really have the background – practical or historical – to truly understand or deal with this sort of criminal civil unrest, if that is what it can be called (I suppose it could named other things as well, but I should like to pretend that there is still a hope for civilization somewhere).
I do, however, have the background to deal with civil wars.
My “preference” with civil wars, if one wants to name such a thing a preference, is with wars that occurred in the long ago. A great deal of that is simply familiarity with history: to me, the Peloponnesian War or the Wars of Alexander’s successor The Diadochi or the Civil Wars of the Republic (or the later disturbances of the early Principate) are far more familiar to me. The other is, perhaps a preference in historical views: one could safely argue that the Civil War in America has far more relevance and impact on my own life, but it is something I have never really had the least bit of interest in. I cannot really explain why; perhaps simply looking at the civil wars of others with a much more significant lapse in time is easier if for no other reason than the outcomes are much clearer.
Not that they are any cleaner, of course. To read of ancient civil wars is merely to bury the violence and brutality under narrative texts and words in black and white. To read of populations decimated, lives tortured, looted, and ended, entire cities destroyed and their populations enslaved – this is no easier for me to read of than reading of the modern news, when it was a thing. In a way, it is much worse because the ancient texts often capture only the most significant events or most famous of people, when in fact the common sort of folk suffered just as much – but they are lost to history.
I wonder if we find ourselves at the same point, Lucilius, in this age where a temporary halt in our learning and recording of history could very well be a much longer sort of thing. A thousand years hence, will any read of a history of The Collapse of North America? What would it say if it existed? Would it focus – as the ancient texts often do – only on the urban centers and the famous? Will “field historians” write works that relate how life in “the provinces” went on? If there are battles, will they even be recorded? Or will they simply disappear into the grass and dust of history?
How remarkable to realize one is in the midst of a historical event, even with the realization that likely no-one will actually know it as history.
Your Obedient Servant, Seneca
Wondering about that Collapse, what about the other continents TB? Were things as uncivil elsewhere as in America? Something to ponder perhaps.
ReplyDeleteThat is a great question, Nylon12. Surely with Ham radio, there would be some news from The Far Abroad. To be honest, I am not sure - but I suspect that, as with the Civil Wars and disturbances noted above (and throughout history), things that are happening far away tend to lose significance as the boundaries of one's world shrink.
DeleteYour narrative is always entertaining and thought provoking, TB, but lately even more so. The problem with history of course, is historiography. One of my favorite quotes from Winston Churchill is "History will look upon me favorably, for I intend to write it!"
ReplyDeleteI am currently reading Ron Unz and his series of essays he groups under the title of "American Pravda." When I described him to my brother as a contrarian, he said that was the understatement of the year. Well, Mr. Unz is very thought provoking, and so well documented in his material, that I have to question not only his writing, but all of my prior education as well. It is the dilemma of our age of the internet to try to ascertain what is true or not. I have described the problem as an enormous exercise in epistemology.
First of all, thank you Greg! Authors like to be read, and if I am provoking thoughts, I am doing my (unpaid) job.
DeleteAnother version of Churchill's quote is "Victors write history" (not always true of course; we have Procopius' Secret History which is very dismissive of his patrons Belisarius and Justinian after he wrote his fine history - but to be fair, the book was never published in his time and was only found centuries later).
A confounding factor to all of this is that once upon a time - within my lifetime, likely within yours - such exercises as archaeology and history made it a point to seek the truth. To be fair, discoveries could change the truth, which still happens - the discovery of a lorica segmenta Roman armor recently, which pushes back its appearance at least a century - but the idea was to get to, as close as possible, the true sense of how things were.
We have replaced that now. History and archaeology, like so many other things, are now not seeking the truth of the past as they were, but rather the modern interpretation of such things. We pour our meaning onto the past - and then judge accordingly.
Primary sources, be they written or physical, are key factors, at least for me. I would always rather read the original work than a summary of the original work (which is a lot of reading, of course). It allows me to interface with the text without the bias and burdens of others.
In that sense, history is a mystery, and like all good detectives we must avail ourselves of the best tools possible in our search for the truth.
Greg beat me to the Winston Churchill quote :-).
ReplyDeleteResearching history for myself is a macro vs micro study. The great broad sweeps of history vs what happened to the Anne Frank family in Holland under the Nazis.
Your reply (snip) says most of what I study history for "things that are happening far away tend to lose significance as the boundaries of one's world shrink."
What happened to my Grandmother leaving Weimar Germany literally with gold coins sewed into their clothing. Their having to give up their gold wedding rings to be German Transport Police to be allowed on the paid for train out of Germany. First stop France, then Great Britian and then NYC is more interesting that the broad view.
Her diaries about Weimar Germany and a once German Banker buying into a Dockworkers job with a gold mark in NYC to provide a job and thus eventually citizenship as an American is interesting to myself. Family having to change their very German name into something more American due to social distrust of Germans.
As was the family serving in the Pacific theater as ex-Germans were not fully trusted.
Michael, one of the many things I love about history is that it is an endless ocean, with all manner of discoveries to be made. One can sail the vast ocean or spend endless hours in coves and bays. It really becomes a matter of personal interest and the value one derives from the material.
DeleteI reckon the biggest challenge to understanding any historical event is that accounts are never objective. History is always viewed from one's particular worldview, culture, and personal life experience. That's just how humans are.
ReplyDeleteI've really come to understand this living in the southern US. I was born and raised in the Midwest, where in school, we had a brief unit on the "Civil War." But I've lived most of my life in the South, where it continues to have an emotional impact amongst folk who emphatically call it the "War of the Northern Aggression." And they still don't like Yankees!
History is a fascinating subject to study. In his How To Read a Book, Mortimer J. Adler advises approaching history by reading as many accounts as possible. Somewhere in the opposing points-of-view, it's hopefully possible to get the gist of what really happened and why.
Leigh, C.S. Lewis in one of his essays noted that when science became about meeting the expectations of views rather than discovering the truth, the value of science would dwindle over time (as would, undoubtedly, its discoveries) as ideology became more important than the science of it. That applies to any endeavor: when ideology becomes more important than the practice, the practice suffers (and eventually produces bad work).
DeleteWe had a similar experience to yours in Greece - in Greece, the Greek-Turkish Civil War and the expatriation of Greeks and Turks following it are not dead issues, nor is the question of using the name Macedonia in the "new" country of Northern Macedonia (previously FYROM, Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia). These are real issues that still live in the minds of people, that have impact in the modern world.
That is good advice by Adler. I would add that I like reading original texts as much as possible rather than the interpretation of texts by others. I think that doing so helps one combat the parochialism of any age by seeing what the original authors actually said about circumstances they actually saw, lived through, or had access to in the nature of works we no longer have, rather than just relying on the experts of the age to interpret them for us.