History, and so what?

. . . An opening for me to say what about history that I got wrong, and what I consider now to be more correct.

In college I wrote a term paper on what history is, er, was. I argued that there was no such thing. There was only the ever-present now. This I made the mistake of submitting to a history professor. He dismissed my understanding, but it appears he did not enlighten me much. So later, years later, I wrote a graduate paper saying much the same thing to no feedback. I guess that is what you get if you elect for pass/no-pass evaluation of your work. No comment and no corrections.

Could it be that I really misunderstood and undervalued this dear field of inquiry so much? for so long? Not really.

What I was confused about and finally got clearer was that history, as other disciplines or fields of knowledge, had a perspective. In fact, yes fact, we all, each and everyone, have a perspective. (I realize my performative error here.) And the perspective of an historian or other specialist conforms in large measure to those shared by others in that calling, or who are well grounded in it. I guess I just wasn't in touch with history's unique, let's say effectively tacit yet most-practiced perspective shared by historians and those who appreciate and identify somehow with their endeavors. Or to be more honest, I didn't think beyond me about what history could be. It could be different from the accounts of personal journeys in consciousness, mostly mine. Or, that personal journeys--those of individual consciousnesses--were also a kind of history, but perhaps not what people usually think that history is or should be.

But history is of great value only if useful, I insist. This too is belied by the oft-heard objection and rejection, "This situation is different." Thus, we can't really use history for better outcomes. History does not really repeat itself. Besides, people don't know history and its lessons, and they can't be bothered to crack a book or two to get a sense of self from memory and where we have come from.

I have to allow, because it is a tenet of my own studies and those of others who pursue the drum, dregs and details accuracy demands, that just to understand something better is a legitimate end. The utility argument may be wrestled into position anytime by any rationalization, but in the end, why bother? What we come to think we understand better now without application is reward enough. Approximate truth is its own reward.

So, whether useful or no, building a case and synthesis of pasts is legit. By history then I mean a very convincing presentation of what happened and then what happened all the way down to the understandings or lesson(s) personal or collective, if any.

The problem is what of the past should be investigated and pieced together? and how? such that when the account is done and finished as much as it can possibly be and we say, "Oh, I now really understand what happened," AND (optionally) "I can take this as a remedy for my/our future." There is the rub, and only those innocents and most knowledgeable can answer this. I am just a consumer, hopefully not too innocent.

I had a colleague once, an historian by academic training and practice. He said once that whatever he could use to bolster his case about whatever, he would employ it. It sounded then as now a bit eclectic. Are there no criteria as to good versus bad evidence? So the questions of which histories should be investigated and reported, and how they are supported, are not trivial.

History is about carefully and precisely understanding the past. It is also, for me, about building futures. I don't know if this definition holds up among the cognoscente, but it suffices.

If different folks know about different stuff, that's how it is, and so what? I admit, I don't know much history, not even enough of my own. Shows, doesn't it?

And so what? Except this.

History is memory. And memory figures largely (entirely?) in my/our identity. When we forget or neglect, we have lost a part of ourselves. More precisely, when we lose the ability to retrieve memories, then we fail to understand who we are, and who we can be if re-minded.

It is that ability I was first concerned about, say twenty years ago. So much is available now so that we will not lose the ability to retrieve. Once retrieved, that record or artifact can be stored privately, semi-publicly and publicly. The current state of information and communications technologies permit us to retrieve, and store and use; and literacy in using these technologies seems to be ever-expanding. Thus, my earlier-life worries that literacy was in decline no longer occupies much space. There are enough careful readers/audience and writers/producers in the world to satisfy the most exacting standards. Technical and human impediments to access keep being eliminated, and more and more people are participating. All good.

Now, the memories themselves. The guardians of the best that we can know about the past is in the hands of professionals and experts in, or living outside, every country, who know how to ferret out wheat from chaff and report. However, because of the openness of the systems and leaks from guarded corners and technologies which can cull without the sifting, we run the great risk of relying upon the essentially or potentially unreliable. The literacy here is not how to use the technologies for our identity's sake, but the ability to discriminate between and among competing accounts as well as to reconcile the parts in order to build wholes. Part of reconciling the parts is dependent upon softer technologies, like ways of thinking, both awareness of and their employment.

Example, history can be seen as the biographies of leaders or the conditions and contexts in which they are called upon to act. Two different histories? The first is to look at history from a third person view of named individuals. The second is to look at history from a systems or sociopolitical view, no names needed, just those softer technologies, call them perspectives, which have proven useful in understanding things. These two histories can be mapped together into a more complex and detailed account that we can call a proper if qualified history.

Where does this leave us: Well, individual from first person view, mine mentioned above, plus that of an individual from a third person view, plus the third person view of a rich description of situations and contexts, and not lastly the weaving of these three together. The weaving together makes for an historical-cultural understanding of the past or pasts. You cannot weave without including all the disparate parts and "making" them make sense. Making sense of what appear to be the separate and irreconcilable is that important job of the historian and cultural commentators. As new technical and softer tools become available which show the promise of greater understanding if employed, yesterday's account of the day before can be revised and placed before us, professionals and others for evaluation.

Identity preserved and accessible. Identity deconstructed via reason-based means. Identity re-constructed. Identity renewed!. And if identity shines recursively in newer and newer lights of past and present, better futures can be imagined and enacted.

A nice state of affairs . . . if all pre-requisites and requisites are in place. Re-minding makes the past present and the present different than it seemed to be when it was without a sense of identity, a sense of our past.