I was a poor student of history, and a good student of science and maths. This might have some bearing on what I now want to say.
It started over a dinner discussion on ethics, morality, parenting, education. Then he said something like..." Learning history is of foremost and necessary value for true education" . Considering that I grew up with very little and distorted historical perspective, and still have vociferous 'reasonable' opinions on everything from society, environment, politics, ethics, and history, that I value, I had to immediately oppose his stance...
What I write now originated over that dinner, together with google searches and wikipedia browsings, pickled in my head over last several days.
The basic argument is rooted in properties of stationary, ergodic processes for stochastic systems...I know, I know, it sounds complex, pretentious(blame the stats guys), but I can explain it on the basis of how and where I encountered it. In astrophysics, if we assume (reasonably) that star ensembles are stochastic( random), and stationary (average ensemble properties do not change with time or location), then observing star ensembles, of different ages (ie snapshot properties) allows you to decipher mean evolutionary properties of stars (time history) - and this is termed ergodicity. Our understanding of stellar evolution is based on such a statistical assumption, which was later verified in studies of star clusters (coeval systems - ie born at the same time). That is, it is unnecessary to watch stars live over their several billion year histories to figure out how they must have, and will continue to live - studying a sample reveals it, well enough.
I now propose that one can use a similar statistical hypothesis for human ensembles. We humans might be characterised as random (stochastic)processes, whose gross behaviors have not been changed or effected with either time or location (stationary). Such an assumption contends that innate human tendencies (such as survival, greed..) which guide how we evolve as a human race, have neither learnt from history nor changed with geographic location i.e. culturally - assuming averages over large enough time or space. Thus, the historical information of societies is embedded in a snapshot look at a cross section of current societies, making 'learning history(LH)' irrelevant.
I would like to argue further that LH has done more harm than good, since history is not just recorded by 'conquerors' but has inspired countless 'future conquerors' with their 'Veni, Vidi, Vici' - justifying, and glorifying distorted ambitions with mindless accumulation of territories, wealth, power. Recording history over millennia has neither taught us to build better societies, nor live more compassionately, equitably. History has been a way of propogating hate, differences, divides and using it to justify repressive behaviours. Citing historical events by Aurangazeb as been a standard excuse for justifying Babri Masjid or post Godhra genocide.
History serves the class whose histories get recorded, and historians who are employed to record it. It also serves dinner discussions of an intellectual class far removed from the struggles of the working class - the latter have neither leisure nor interest in a history irrelevant to their lives.
What we require, is to have a set of moral principles , guided by philosophical discussions to set down a set of ethical codes of conduct. This would then frame the 'learning' within which we operate as conscious, critical, open, rational, societies that 'live in the moment' based on their democratic and evolving beliefs. The only small way that history should participate is via the influence of culture. Cultures are histories imbibed, digested and expressed as organic, transformative effects in living societies.
Food for further thought on ergodicity and human ensemble can be found here.
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3 comments:
I wish I had read this a week ago.
On August 3rd I was virtually (i.e. on twitter) mauled for saying that one cannot quell dissent with brute force and history does tell us that.
I was given (by Twitter's capitalist brigade) a lesson in evolution. i.e - man came from animals and violence is a part of nature - and violence is natural - blah blah blah. The process of quelling dissent is apparently called war etc etc etc - you get the drift.
The line about dinner discussions and history is superb.
Dear Sis,
I feel that you generalise too much when you say that history is only written by the conquerors and that it teaches us to glorify conquests, accumulation etc..
Lessons learnt from history may also depend on how it is taught and what each person chooses to learn from it. History includes stories of great men like Gandhiji whose philosophy is still being followed.
History may also teach us what not to do... Ashoka finally became a buddhist monk. Alexander in spite of his power finally died of sickness far away from his home and that too at a very young age.
Hitler has become more an example of what to look out for and avoid in our societies...
All Good Points Sis -
However...for the sake of argument,
to me Gandhi and Ashoka evolved in response to conquests, repression..
even Israel has not learnt the appropriate lesson from hitler's saga -see their palestinian policy. Alexander I know excites adventure for conquest in young, even now - a young man recently said his role model was Alexander, even if it means fast death. There is also the point of Buddha and Gandhi becoming cultural figures to propogate what was really and trully valuable in what they had to say to society - that would live even without text book recording - and become part of living history. Good to think about these things though (for me).
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