Why Learn History?

History is the experience of humanity. To be ignorant of it is

to form one’s world views as a child. To live life in ignorance of history is like picking up a book, turning to some random page and reading it out of context. Without knowledge of the past, there is no conceivable way one might make any sense of our own time for our present society is the product of a complex sequence of events that preceded us. A frequent question put towards history is: “Why should I care about all those dead people?” After all, all of that is come and gone, never to be seen again. This approach, however, evidences an extremely shallow understanding.

To many people, history is indeed synonymous with memorizing names and dates. To be fair, this is a common scholastic approach, a source of rote work that effectively inures millions to one of the most valuable storehouses of knowledge—that of collective human experience. True enough, history in the classroom tends to be reduced to an insipid swill of superficial facts and state indoctrination. Too often though, this becomes an excuse to dismiss all that came before as irrelevant information about dead people. It is a poor excuse because without understanding how our present reality came to be, one can neither understand the present nor have any insight into the probable courses of the future.

Without the barometer of history, one is slave to the fashions of the hour. In ignorance of the long term and the larger scale, there can be no means of distinguishing a transient cultural fad from the deeper truths of human nature. There can be no determination whether one’s pervasive local society is representative of a larger whole or merely an anomaly. For instance, many cultural attitudes taken for granted as universal truth in Western industrialized societies have existed for less than a century. Ideas such as the ‘fact’ that teenagers are always ‘surly, angry, and lazy’ is one such fabrication. ‘Teenagers’ for instance is a term that didn’t exist until the mid twentieth century. Closer examination tells one that this current widespread attitude is an insignificant blip against the larger human experience. For most of human history young people have been active participants in society, so much so, that only recently in the English language was there a word to distinguish them as a specific group loaded with connotations of materialism, selfishness, and rebelliousness. Without knowledge of history no such critical examination is possible. Thus, in ignorance, one is prisoner to a host of fleeting ‘truths.’

For this very reason, there can be no such thing as an informed citizenry without an understanding of history. Without knowledge of history, one becomes the dupe of demagogues. Without any means of evaluating the truth of claims about past states of society or even the essential needs and nature of humanity, even the most absurd claims can be put forth by the sufficiently charismatic and powerful as serious propositions. Without history, there is no means by which a citizenry might judiciously decide the course of the state. As much as autocracy is looked down upon in the West, the founders of the American republic understood all too well that a body of uninformed, shallowly reactive citizenry can be even more capricious, tyrannical, and shortsighted than any single person. These founders were likely quite familiar with the tendency of the ancient Athenian citizenry to destroy their greatest generals and philosophers the moment something went wrong. An illustrious career in service of the people or works of genius mean nothing against a transient aggregate tantrum. Thus, a great lesson of history is that ignoring the past is to be the unwitting pawn of fleeting fashions and passions, whether evoked by chance or through the deliberate manipulations of the clever.

The moment someone says ‘the lessons of history.’ One gives an inward, if not an entirely audible groan and one’s eyes begin to glaze over. After all, common wisdom is that the “lesson of history is that no one ever learns from the lessons of history.” What’s the point? From this perspective, the whole thing is dismissed as a waste of time anyway. Once again, such an attitude is merely the result of common misunderstandings perpetuated by rote academics. When one thinks of ‘lessons of history’ the age old chestnut “Never get in a land war in Asia” comes to mind. We instantly think of Napoleon, then Hitler, then the board game, Risk and say to ourselves “Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.”

However, this sort of sentiment is not an example of how one should learn from history. , It is silly advice to begin with. Why should the German Wehrmacht have backed out of its Russian invasion based on Napoleon’s experience? It was a different time with different circumstances, with different logistics and equipment when it came to making war. The Germans were not the 18^th century French, nor were they led by a Corsican, and they had the means to reach Moscow before winter ever came. Why suppose beforehand that the result must be disaster and defeat as eventually occurred?

The trouble with such ‘lessons’ and the reason why they are uninspiring is because they only ever seem to apply in armchair hindsight and rarely, if ever are any use in the present. Upon further reflection one realizes these ‘lessons’ are indeed more or less meaningless. After all, the Mongols had a long series of extremely successful land wars in Asia; conquering the Russian principalities was a relatively minor task for them.

The misconception here about ‘lessons of history’ is that it presumes a cyclical, repeating, predictable human experience.

History according to the traditional Chinese perspective was based on the concept of dynastic cycles. Now, there are no more dynasties, the cycle upon which their very definition was based is broken. True historical study on the other hand, allows one to transcend the historical cycles and patterns of one’s isolated time or culture. The sentiment “History repeats itself” is taken far too literally. What it really means is that the fundamental forces and principles driving human beings are constant and that certain trends and types of trends will therefore appear across generations and civilizations. It is not the events in history that repeat, but the principles behind history. Critical analysis of history provides a reliable guide to human tendencies as well as plenty of extremes and departures from the norm that give one a far more expansive and accurate idea of human potential.

The German defeat could be used as a warning against cyclical thinking: The Fuhrer had enjoyed so many easy victories that he was lulled into overconfidence by expecting the same result would continue to follow. The Germans proved woefully unprepared when events failed to conform to their leader’s highly optimistic plans. Unlike the rather unhelpful ‘never fight a land war in Asia’ the lesson that unbroken success can lull humans into making fatal mistakes can be applied across times and places, in an office or on a battlefield. It is a weakness in human nature that if recognized through the study of humanity, can be accounted for.

One of the most important principles that can be learned from history is among the reasons why one should study history. Benjamin Franklin succinctly sums it up as “The present age is never the golden age.”

Those detached from the past and thus without perspective tend to look back with longing on ‘the good old days’ and be ungrateful of the good in the present. Without knowledge of history, there is no possibility to appreciate the ways in which they live more happily than their ancestors or the ways in which quality of life has degraded across the generations. Their lot is merely a dim dissatisfaction which they are powerless to remedy. Without perspective, one can feel no more satisfied with a sewing machine than a prehistoric human felt with the first crude bone sliver to serve as a needle.

Thus through studying history, one increases their wellbeing through knowledge as well as their potential to do good in the present. One expands the domain they live in far beyond their immediate surroundings. A student of history becomes an active citizen of humanity across time. Examination from historical principles allows one to see the larger human nature that one’s time and place can only hint at. To eschew history as the irrelevant study of ‘dead people’ is in a sense to divorce oneself from the continuity that is humanity and by so doing to actively choose ignorance of one’s own nature and identity.

Misconceptions of Childhood as Social Pathology

It cannot be forgotten that every child has a full time job: to learn everything they need to know to survive as an adult.  In affluent western households, children are often treated like household pets.  They are most valued for being ‘cute’ and generally encouraged to remain in that state for as long as possible.  Through most of history children have been free labor.  The romanticized idea of an ‘innocent,’ ‘magical’ childhood is a relatively recent concept that began to take hold in the late Victorian period among an affluent few.  As the West enjoyed mass affluence in the 20th century, this view became dominant and in the 21st century it grows to ridiculous proportions.

Children must be taught early on that they are not pets.  They are apprentice
humans who must contribute to the family as soon as they are able.  Their parents are there to teach discipline and train them in the habits that will make them strong and successful, not to be their kids’ best friends(this can come later in life).  Putting children to work is of critical importance.  There may not be a family farm to look after any more, but many children grow up seeing their wellbeing come out of nowhere.  They grow up as part of a family they have invested nothing into.  As soon as they hit adolescence, family regresses to little more than a part time job.  Children are showered with gifts but not expected to give anything back.  Thus, they grow up disconnected from the give and take that is the foundation of any lasting human relationship.  As adolescents and adults they end up learning that they must earn their way through life in contradiction to an entire childhood filled with ‘magic’.  Suddenly, just as they must begin thinking about caring for themselves, the adolescent must in an instant unlearn everything he or she has ever been taught.  The adult world they are growing into is jarringly and completely different from the world of children.  This disconnect is taken for granted in the 21st century Western world, but certainly it should not be.  In generations past, life went through its stages, but from birth, one’s experiences were part of a coherent continuity that fed directly into adult life.

In Victorian times, the ‘magic of childhood’ type of thinking was a reaction to the extremes of the day.  With the industrial revolution, children were commonly being placed on adult length shifts in dirty, dangerous jobs.  Because children’s hands were small, they were just the right size for reaching inside machines.  Because their bodies were small, they were just the right size for crawling through shafts in coal mines.  To top it all off, hiring kids was ridiculously cheap and if separated from family, they could be coerced into even longer shifts and into performing especially undesirable jobs.  An entire generation of children began to emerge from factories and mines with missing appendages, stooped and beaten frames, and in general, malnourished, sickly, and weak.  Those who had the privilege of living above the lower levels of society did everything they could to distance their own children from this nightmare existence.  A new ethic of shielding children from the world’s realities and keeping them in a safe, happy place until adulthood emerged.

While the misfortunes of industrialization were important in inspiring modern thought, just as critical were advancements in medicine.  Well into the 19th century, child mortality was quite frequent, an indisputable fact of life.  Spending lots of time obsessing about one kid just wasn’t worth it; getting too attached was just a way of getting hurt.  Chances were high that any given child would be dead before age 5 or 6.  As childhood mortality dropped off drastically with the beginning of the 20th century, interest in the early lives of children increased sharply.  With the vast move from rural family farms to suburbs in the 1940s and 50s, there was no longer much incentive to have children work, it was actually easier to keep them in the home as ‘innocent,’ ‘magical’ pets.  Still, children remained reasonably independent and spent much of their time learning by playing outside all day long, freely taking risks, and occasionally getting hurt.

Unfortunately an attitude that began from revulsion towards backbreaking child labor in hazardous environments passed down unchallenged from generation to generation, its original purpose all but forgotten.  More and more laws were made protecting children and their sheltered status.  By the 1960s a vast chasm had grown between the world of children and the adult world.
In the 21st century, adult life is an utterly foreign land that many do not truly see until their early twenties, after college.

If given half a chance children will grow to be hardy and strong.  However, they consistently fail to thrive when protected to the point of suffocation.  The same principle emerges in every aspect of childhood.  Studies have shown that children who are raised in a scrupulously sanitary environment grow up to be sickly because they never developed immunities.  Meanwhile, children who were allowed to go outside and play in the dirt become resilient and develop strong immunities to the pathogens they come into contact with.  Whether it is the immune system or their mind and character, children are inherently meant to be exposed to challenges at an early age.  Not only does it not harm them, it is a critical part of healthy development.

In Western society, it is taken for granted that adolescents are dictated by the very laws of nature to be surly, neurotic, depressed, and lazy.  Is this any surprise if children are never shown the basic rules of the adult world:  that one must work to eat, that one must compete to live, that one must give to receive.  Of course they feel put upon when the time comes to work when they’ve never had to do it before.  Of course they’re neurotic, depressed, and surly when they finally have to put in their share.  Of course life becomes highly stressful for adolescents when the entire life they grew up with turns out to be nothing more than an illusion and they have to begin again from day 1.  Having grown up without expectations, they prove to be weak, wilting, hothouse plants when it comes time to contribute as an adult.  To even begin to do so they must unlearn every habit they have ever been raised with, a process that is bound to be both tumultuous and painful.  Can it be taken as any surprise that the most privileged generation in history is committing suicide and falling to mental illness in droves?

In the past, children, and especially adolescents would have spent plenty of time in company of their peers, but the focus of their lives would have been their family and the need to be able to succeed one day in the world of adults.  From the earliest age possible, children were begun in the precursors of skills that would make for a successful adulthood.  Their education took place in the presence of adults, their standard of conduct was set by adults, and adults were inevitably their role models.  Under the current system, children grow up in artificial third world societies governed by children.  I call them third world societies because the notion of merit is foreign; status is decided based on who can claw their way to the top through corruption, deception, and brute force.  Personal worth and rank are defined by ‘popularity’ and other arbitrary criteria.  This environment is completely isolated from the adult world and the values it encourages are inimical to long term success as an adult.  It severs the continuity between child and adult, dividing life into two disparate parts that render one another nonsensical.

In throwing crowds of children into one building so they can raise each other in a dysfunctional civilization of their own making, I reflect that those who implemented the system might have been true believers in the ‘magic of childhood.’  This philosophy contains the notion of child ‘innocence.’  This is an egregious misunderstanding of young humans.  Children are not innocent.  In fact, they are most likely to openly express humanity’s worst impulses.  Children have yet to be socialized.  Socialization includes the development of moral inhibitions.  Children are amoral.  Unless taught otherwise, they feel perfectly entitled to do whatever necessary to realize their ambitions.  By the very undeveloped nature of their brains, they are narcissistically self-centered, unremittingly cruel towards any in whom they sense weakness, and willing to forcibly take anything they calculate is not adequately protected against them.  They fly into a rage every time they do not get precisely what they want; they have yet to learn patience.  They have no sense of justice or fairness.  They are outraged when punished for infractions against others and are again outraged when those who wrong them are not punished completely out of proportion to their offense.  Childhood is not to be perpetuated, let alone glorified.  The correct approach is to instruct children in the ways of adults as soon as possible.

‘Innocence’ is often understood to be a lack of knowledge of the less savory aspects of existence, yet ignorance is not bliss as it is so often said to be.  Any reflection on childhood or observation of children quickly reveals the true nature of things—ignorance is fear.  Children are typically afraid of everything because they do not yet understand the ways of the world.  As far as they know, anything could happen and thus, even the shadows at the bottom of the closet seem a possible threat.  In reminiscence on living through that less developed stage, it’s amusing, but if we reminisce a little deeper, we realize the fear was quite serious at the time.  It is the lot of a child to live in an open-ended universe with no guarantees and the fearful unknown lurking everywhere until they begin to acquire knowledge and understanding.  There is nothing romantic about this difficult phase of development.  It is certainly not to be described as ‘innocence’.

Not only is this ‘magical childhood’ perspective blatantly backward, it demeans the rich and rewarding experience of adulthood.  This is a pity because adulthood, the chance to be wise, strong, skilled, and loving is the good part of life, not the beginning part where we do all the initial learning.  The feelings of confidence, security, and peace we feel as adults are unknown to children.  When we have mastered the fears that abound in an inexperienced mind, only then is the way to real enjoyment of life opened.

Ultimately, it is foolish to shower a small child with lavish gifts in celebration of a ‘special’ time of life.  Such a new apprentice human is just as happy with two oddly shaped sticks as with the latest primary colored, loudly shrilling gimmick.  A child approaching adulthood should be given many gifts that will help him or her pursue their dreams, peace of spirit, and development as a human being.

Since I have made many criticisms, I have also turned my thoughts to solutions.  There is no longer a family farm that makes child labor necessary.  However, there are still plenty of household chores to be done, especially if both parents are busy at work.  There are plenty of ‘traditional’ aspects that could be brought back into life by employing one’s children.  One could teach their children how to grow a vegetable garden, how to bake fresh bread, how to fix meals.  All of these skills drastically reduce the cost of feeding the family.  Since girls are no longer taught to cook and clean, it is an important set of basic skills for both sexes.  And to be realistic these are things many adults have never been taught.  Thus it has the potential to be a learning experience for all involved.  Such skills have the potential to become part of a family heritage, an heirloom that can be passed down to the next generation and give a solid feeling of identity in a liquid age.

If the family owns a business, it is a good idea to get the kids involved right away.  For instance, I recently visited a small family run shop where the kids were allowed to work at the cash register with their parents nearby to lend a helping hand if necessary.  A business allows children to see the adult working world in action from the very start, and they love having the opportunity to emulate adult behaviors.  It is a lesson they can learn while small that many college students still have not been taught.

If one had their home near some local businesses instead of miles away from non-residences in the suburbs, the kids could be sent to get groceries, take clothes to the cleaners, and run all manner of errands.  It could be a social experience for the children and an opportunity to deal with adults outside of the family.  These sorts of practices could save endless time and fuel for busy parents.  The less busy the parents are, the more time they have to actually be around their kids and have more influence in their upbringing.  If people are willing to be open to a different lifestyle, it is quite possible to bring change to the current dismal situation that so many people take for granted.

As a final consideration, I do not advocate what many refer to as a ‘soccer mom’ lifestyle: a way of existence in which children are constantly being taken to different activities and lessons.  In themselves none of these activities are bad, but children must go out into the world and obtain knowledge and understanding.  The explorations they undergo themselves are the most fruitful of all.  To have kids constantly locked up in classrooms and learning activities, even outside of school, is just another instance of the social pathology of smothering children through obsession and overprotection.  At lessons, children are under the direct control of an authority figure at all times.  In an environment that encourages healthy development, children are given responsibility and freedom by degrees as they master the skills they are taught.  When their obligations are fulfilled, they ought to most certainly be free to explore their world as they will.  It has all but been forgotten that children must be given space if they are to develop as strong, independent individuals.  All they need be given is half a chance, and they will grow without the defects, disorders, and neuroses that have become commonplace.  It has all but been forgotten that human beings, especially young ones, are incredibly resilient by nature.  To be allowed to discover the difficulties of the world for themselves, to have the opportunity to fail, to get scraped knees, and then to learn is all that is required.  The widespread obsession with ‘protecting children’s innocence’ is nothing more than taking what’s fixed and breaking it.

The Dark Joke of the Modern Totalitarian State

Some of the most ruthless individuals who ever lived, the rulers of Nazi Germany comprised a weird, oddly comical collection of personalities no author could ever have conceived of. They were the type that get left out at (or not invited to) dinner parties: Hess and Roehm, gays in a regime that reviled homosexuality, Himmler, the disgruntled chicken farmer, Papen, the effete noble, Goebbels, failed playwright and pint-sized propagandist, Funk the obsequious Wormtail, and Frick the professional desk jockey who signed off people’s lives as if it were any other paperwork. Nay forget Ribbentrop a diplomat with no social skills, Keitel the military yes man, and Rosenberg, the pseudo-philosopher. As weird as all the rest put together was Adolf Hitler, a failed artist, ex-homeless person, a man who actually enjoyed WWI, who was a vegetarian yet ate a mountain of sweets every day, whose tantrums were so intense that detractors referred to him as ‘carpet chewer’, who sported history’s most ridiculous mustache, who was a megalomaniac incapable of having a two way conversation. Only Goering—the flying ace and popular war hero with his infectious grin balanced out the cast of criminals. If it were not horribly real, one might think it some warped black comedy. People would certainly wonder if the author was mentally imbalanced.

What originates that certain sense of weird one gets when looking upon these deranged rulers and the states they create? Do maladjusted minds bent on oppression have a certain element in common?

***

Across the river Spree in modern Berlin, it is clear that the East German regime was in force not so long ago. When I was staying there, I most definitely got a monstrous, unsettling feeling of weirdness.  In the Friedrichshain district, it was tough to get a street address because of the gigantic blocky buildings with no signs that took up an entire city block and which were built along vacant eight lane roads and 20 meter wide sidewalks. The balconies of towering, dismal condos were painted bright primary colors in eye scorchingly poor taste, and the subway interiors all through the East side were tiled in single colors varying at each stop between mud brown, bile yellow, and scrubs green. In the sterile and ominous atmosphere of the former STASI headquarters, there were landscapes of Mitte district hung on the walls rendered in simple patterns and neutral colors—as if it were a design for a paper cup.

Thinking over it all, I wonder if such mind boggling oddness is just a byproduct of modern dictators. Consider Kim Jong Il, an autocrat who denounces Western culture, yet for whom a basketball signed by Michael Jordan is an appropriate gift. Consider the tyrant Ceausescu, a cobbler, who while oppressing Romania for more than twenty years, hailed himself as ‘The Danube of Thought.’ He squeezed a country impoverished by his disastrous policies to build himself a ‘people’s palace’ of bizarrely grandiose proportions.(James Bond would opine he had an edifice complex.) In Berlin, almost all of the Third Reich buildings were destroyed, but the former Luftwaffe headquarters remains—a giant neo-classical brick that of course covers an entire block.

Absolute rulers have been common throughout history and gigantic palaces a staple, but something sharply distinguishes the variety that arose from nation states in the 20^th century. Most autocrats of the past paid at least nominal respects to a higher power or ideology (God, the Gods, the way of Heaven) and had a whole host of bureaucrats, nobles, and even eunuchs over whom they had varying degrees of control. Some of these rulers certainly rivaled modern dictators in ruthlessness and vanity, but there were other powers in the state they had to contend with and they did not have the same opportunities provided by later technology. The new tyrants in contrast establish themselves at the top of the ideological and spiritual hierarchy. The resulting state is founded on a strange cult of personality. Any checks and balances of power such as parliaments and elections are just a quick fix for discontent or a phony show for the benefit of other nations. Mass media and cameras allow the unrestrained dictator to infiltrate every aspect of every citizen’s life and modern weaponry gives the ability to oppress millions with impunity even while loathed by all except for a cadre of well-paid loyalists.

This unparalleled power enjoyed by a modern totalitarian ruler, rather than being awe inspiring ironically has an opposite effect. Culture, artwork, and architecture suffer ludicrously with the suppression of free thought. With every absurdly large and blocky building the dictator constructs, every unremarkable portrait that is painted, and every dull propaganda-laced program put on the air, the comically bloated egotism and small, self-serving thought behind it all becomes ever more apparent. In this lies a certain dark joke, that these improbable people who no one would want at their dinner party are running a country. Their willingness to hide cameras in people’s houses, in the clothing of unofficial informers, and even tree trunks says more about their own petty paranoia and personal abyss of insecurity than it does about those who are monitored through every day for any trace of treason.

Visiting the vestiges of totalitarian states gave me feelings of dread, fear, a spine-tingling cold, and at times the urge to laugh. All together, it comprised that feeling of weirdness. A medieval ruler had no equivalent means of direct observation, influence, and involvement, but with these new technologies, more light is shed on the deepest intent of the autocrat—the drive to subsume an entire population into their being until it becomes indistinguishable from any other bodily appendage.

Madeleine L’engle, in a Wrinkle in Time, imagines a world called Camazotz where an entire society functions in perfect synchrony with a central, disembodied brain. The slightest act of non-conformity is treated as an aberration and pathogen; a threat to the body. I found myself thinking of Camazotz as I encountered the unnaturally square, coldly utilitarian, the eerily tidy, and the chillingly bland. However, I very much doubt that such a terrible allegorical world could ever come to be. The mission of a megalomaniac goes against the very grain of the human spirit and from this folly, I think, derives the dark joke.