Posted on 06/30/2016 3:37:46 PM PDT by V K Lee
History is a lie. Or, rather, a complex galaxy of truths, half-truths, exaggerations, and downplayings that together form a narrative. We don’t write histories because we want to record what really happened; we write them in order to provide ourselves with a meaningful story. We write history because we, as humans, have a fundamental need for meaning in life. We yearn to make order out of chaos, we feel we have to derive positive significance from the hardship and the trials of the everyday. In this sense, history, far from being an accurate record of reality, is an escape from reality. We write our stories so that we can be better people.
The acceptance of these stories, however factually flawed, forms a sort of social contract. We tell ourselves and each other that perhaps our motivations were more noble than they really were at the time. We tell ourselves that what we did, we did because a greater good necessitated it. We tell each other that it’ll all be okay in the end because we lived in pursuit of a noble cause. What action arises from these untruths is, we trust, better than what could have been were we to view ourselves with the coldly rational light of pure record.
(Excerpt) Read more at frontporchrepublic.com ...
Oh look. A steaming pile of revisionist drivel, written as a paean to the concept that truth is relative.
“History is lies men have agreed on”.
Well not totally but to a large degree.
The grotesque, horsified, rock-crude, clueless manipulation is strong in this one.
More at link.
It can stay there.
First of all, a good historian doesn't "write" history. He RECORDS it. Second, maybe the story is meaningful without any embellishment. And maybe therein lies its value.
“Who are public monument for?”
That easy, for politicians and elites so they can show the little people who they should worship.
No one? Nobody? "Wholly" sets a standard too high. It's hard to believe that Confederate spirit just vanished in 1865 and former rebels just hung their heads in shame.
What those who built them were doing was writing a therapeutic history. They were dealing with the grief of loss, both personal and social. They were seeking to redeem the past, to place a bandage over the gaping wound of war and hundreds of thousands of sons lying dead on battlefields across the country. They were hoping for a better world in the full knowledge that it was selfishness and denial of the humanity of others that had led to such pointless slaughter.
There is something in the idea of "therapeutic history," but I think he's projecting too much 20th or 21st century thinking back on the mid-19th century.
Even 50 years ago there were people his last sentence wouldn't describe -- not in the sense he probably intended it.
Like many Front Porch Republic articles this one's a little too airy and abstract, which is a little surprising if the point is to celebrate the concrete and local.
So the elites have decided we should worship at Stonewall. Among other places.
Well said.
At least in some circumstances to celebrate “queerdom”!
Who Are Public Monuments For?
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