Why History Matters

 

 

In this essay I would like to examine and explore the question, why does history matter to us today? History seems to have little relevance in the modern world of industrialisation, technology, science, and onward progress. In a society which values the new as always better, and the old as old fashioned and irrelevant, history seems best left to the antiquated historians to argue about in their universities. It seems to have little to do with the bigger and better technology that industrialisation produces, and the newer and better discoveries of science. University courses on AI, computer science, and all things digital are preferred above the humanities to the extent that some professors wonder whether the humanities is worth keeping at all. This begs the question, is history relevant? Does history still matter to us today? In this essay I would like to argue that yes, it is, and show you why. 

     Before I get into the meat of this essay, I would like to define my terms. It is important to understand that, though the terms history and the past are used interchangeably, they are different and mean different things. The past is what really happened, the facts. The war in Europe ended on May 8, 1945. The Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia were shot on June 28, 1914. These are historical facts. History, on the other hand, is better called historical interpretation. It is our interpretation of the past, the story we tell about what happened in the past. For example, the First World War started in the Balkans, would be an interpretation. Did the war really start in the Balkans? It is a question that is up for debate. The past doesn’t change, but our interpretation changes constantly. Historiography, then, is the way historians throughout history have written about the past. Different historians from different historiographical schools interpret and write about history differently depending on the lens they are looking through. Historical literacy is a good chronological knowledge and understanding of the past, of history, and of different historiographical schools and interpretations. Historical methodology is the skills historians use to study and examine the past and discover historical truth. It includes things like recognising bias, analysing a source to decide whether it is credible and reliable, and collecting historical evidence. Historical empathy is putting ourselves into the shoes of those who lived  in the past and trying to see that time period  from their perspective. Historical humility is recognising that we are humans too and also make mistakes and not judging the people of the past too harshly. It is recognising, also, that one day people will study us and our decisions and judge them based on the presuppositions and assumptions of their own day. And lastly, historical imagination is being able to visualise the past in order to paint an accurate picture of it. 2

     Understanding the past and the people in it is important because they’re still very much a part of us. The world is the way it is today because of the generations who lived before us. The ideas, choices, books, families, individuals, politics, wars, famines, plagues, and so on have formed and shaped the world that we know – the modern world and modern people, the individuals, ideas, politics, books, and so forth of our own time. We do not exist in a vacuum. We are not the only great civilization to exist on this planet. This modern world is not all that there has been. Our generation is only one generation out of thousands of generations who have gone before us and thousands of generations who will come after us. Our time period is only one time period out of many. Out of milenia of world history, the modern world has only existed for the last hundred and twenty years or so. We exist as a single point on the timeline of world history and we would do well to remember and acknowledge that as it helps to get us off our high horses and humble us. A lack of historical literacy leads to us living in a tiny bubble world of modernity and falling prey to the lie that this is all there is, that the world has always been this way, that people have always seen things the way people see things now, and that the world is only getting better and better. C.S. Lewis called it the “evil enchantment of modernity.” Lewis’ solution for this “evil enchantment” was a stronger ‘spell’.1  We need the perspectives, ideas, writings, and traditions of our forebears, those that are worth keeping and passing on, that is, because not all of them are. There is much ugliness in the past and the only way to heal from that generationally is to face it. But there is also much that is good and fair and worth keeping and passing on to future generations. There is much that I could say about historical interpretation – the nostalgia, mythologising, the idealising of the past, which, in truth, we do all the time, because how many of us want to stare its ugliness in the face? 

    History, that is, historical interpretation, matters because there are always those, especially politicians, who feed us a false and twisted and biased view of the past to bolster their own agenda and use for their own ends. If we are going to not fall prey to that evil spell, then we need a stronger counter spell [Lewis, Weight of Glory]3, and that is historical literacy – knowing and understanding the past as it really happened and how it really was. In other words, seeking and knowing historical truth. Vladimir Putin has his own version of historical interpretation that he uses to justify his war in Ukraine. Is it an accurate interpretation? Or is it propagandist? How would we even know since most of us aren’t versed at all in the history of Russia and Ukraine. America is another nation whose politics are deeply rooted in its history. Do we know how to recognise the difference between what really happened in America’s past, particularly at the time of its founding, and a biased interpretation or propaganda? American evangelicals, in particular, are very good at having their own interpretation of their history that over Christianizes and idealizes it, which in turn is strongly biased. This then feeds much of the current Christian nationalism, particularly among Trump supporters. 

    Many, if not all, of the political and social issues we are facing today are deeply historical issues, and by that I mean that they are deeply rooted in history, whether it is a true and accurate interpretation of history, or a propagandist interpretation. The Marxist social justice groups such as Black Lives Matter are drawing from history to make their case about current social issues. Terms like “racism”, “white privilege”, and “anti-colonialism”, are words that they are defining based on a particular historical interpretation.

     As I stated earlier, there is much ugliness, darkness, brokenness, and suffering in the past. It stands as a testament to human cruelty and the depth of human suffering. Perhaps one of the reasons we idealise it is so we don’t have to stare its darkness in the face? The idealisation of the past is based on a biased interpretation. It is an interpretation that makes things seem cleaner than they were. We view it as the “good ol days” and hold it up as something to emulate and return to with a sense of nostalgia. I wish to make it clear to my readers that this is not what I am doing in this essay. The past is gone, it’s in the past. But that is not the same as saying it doesn’t matter and that we no longer need to give it time and thought. Nor do we need to return to some idealised cleaned up version of history, Christian or otherwise. There is nothing wrong with nostalgia, with longing again for what is past. There is much that is good and fair in the past. There is much good that has been lost. The past also brings out the best in people, the heroic, brave, and honourable in humanity. Part of the reason why we teach and study history is so we don’t forget the old values and the old world as it was. It is so we don’t forget the grand epic story that we are all a part of. The story of humanity. It is so we can find our own place in this story, receive the baton if you will from our fathers, and run on holding it high. Each generation has faced its own crises and fought its own battles. Now it is our turn. History helps us to decide what our role will be, what side of history we will be on. 

     So then, what are the costs of forgetting and neglecting history? What happens when a nation no longer sees history as important? China has a long history of imperialist totalitarianism. The first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, according to the historical record, burned the books and buried the scholars alive because the scholars were pointing people back to the old values of China and reminding people of the way things had been in the days before this emperor’s rule. Something similar happened in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge where Pol Pot killed people who wore glasses, the reason being that people who wore glasses were by indication educated which in turn indicated that those people were versed in history and the dictator wanted none of that. There is a trend or pattern if you will that when countries have statist governments that are oriented towards totalitarianism, then history is hated, twisted, and despised, and their governments go to great lengths to destroy the past and replace it with the twisted propagandist version of history that they want people to hear. During the French Revolution, the radical Jacobins erased the history of France and changed the calendar, starting the new one and the new France from Day One of the Republic. The Ancient Egyptians didn’t have much of an understanding of history at all, or at least not in the way we understand it. When a new Pharaoh took the throne, he would go to great lengths to erase the memory of the Pharaoh who went before him, ordering his image to be scratched off the political artwork on the temple walls. The cost of forgetting or devaluing history is that our freedom, our history, our rights and liberties, our traditions, our values, our civilization, will be slowly taken away from us bit by bit and we won’t realise it until it is too late. 

History does not repeat itself but it does move in patterns and there are themes that we can trace throughout history that come up time and time again. History cannot predict the future but it can come close. Early on in the covid lockdown crisis of 2020 I saw where we were headed. I knew, from my knowledge of history, that governments tend to take a crisis like this and use it as a way to grab more power from the people and to increase their control over people’s lives. I guessed that this is what would happen. And it did. It’s not because I have some kind of gift of prophecy. I don’t. I just know my history. We’ve seen it before. We’ve just come off the back of half a century of Communist experiments for goodness’ sake. Have we as western people learned nothing from that? What about the 1930’s, which often played in my mind during those years as I saw similarities and parallels with what was happening in the west during 2020-21 with what happened in the west then. 

     There is another cost to forgetting and devaluing history, and that is that we miss out on the depth of perspective and being that historical literacy gives us. You think that you do not need this depth of perspective and being. Think then about the superficiality of our modern age- of people who can’t see past the next footy game or the next party night with friends. We live for the moment and don’t stop to think about the broader sweep of our lives and the lives of our parents and grandparents and the impact that they are having on our people, on our communities, on our history, and on the generations to come. We don’t stop to think about where our lives are going, for to think of that is to admit that perhaps we are not immortal or invincible after all. To think about the grand sweep of things is to think about time and its finiteness. It is to remember that for the vast majority of people who walk on this planet, we are born, we live, and we die, and we are forgotten. To remember the past and our place in history is to remember that we are finite and as such it is to remember how small we really are. But sometimes, as Galadriel says in one of The Lord of the Rings movies, even the smallest person can change the course of the future. This was said to the main character, the hobbit Frodo, who had the monumental task of carrying the ring of power to Mordor and destroying it by throwing it into the crack of doom. But it must be pointed out that Frodo did not do this task alone, that would have been impossible. It took the whole Fellowship to save Middle Earth, not simply one small hobbit. This reminds me that the future is not set- it can be changed and shifted and moved according to our actions in the present. Small groups of people can have a major impact, whether for good or for ill. We think that our lives do not have an impact – but think about it, maybe they do. Maybe you want to have an impact on history – if so, how? How will your life change the course of the future? 

     A third cost to the forgetting of history is the loss to our heritage, our nationhood, our sense of identity. Now I must be careful here because history has unfortunately been used to bolster nationalistic ideologies including fascism and this isn’t good. This is not what I am referring to here. I mean that, in another sense, a nation’s history is a crucial part of a nation’s heritage and sense of identity. When a nation loses her history she loses the sense of who she is and why she is here and what she is about. She becomes an island cut off from the mainland, drifting wherever the tide of politics and society pulls her. For centuries, people have transmitted and passed on their history to future generations through folk songs, tales, and dances, rituals and traditions, days of commemoration, recipes that have stayed in the family for generations, trades and crafts that have been passed on from father to son to grandson, oral stories and ballads, mythologies, and legends. These help to keep a people together and to remind them of who they are and where they have come from. Every April 25 in Australia and New Zealand we commemorate ANZAC Day, a day set aside to remember those brave service men and women who fought in our wars, many of whom made the ultimate sacrifice. Without history, their stories would fade into oblivion. And what then? It has been said, that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Well, as I said earlier, history does not repeat itself but it does unfold in patterns, and those patterns are bound to be repeated if we forget where we’ve come from in the past. To remember history is to learn from the lives of our forefathers and to use that wisdom and perspective to look forward and create a better future for the generations that will come after us. 

    To remember history is ultimately to look forward to the world that will be, the world that our children and grandchildren will live in when they remember our present time as history.  What kind of world do I want my children and grandchildren to inherit ? What sort of lives do I want them to live? What values do I want them to hold?  History matters because the future matters. Where we are going matters. And to look forward, we have to look back. Yes, history is relevant in the midst of our modernity. This essay is not to bash modernity (though sometimes I sure want to!), but like the message E. M. Forster masterfully weaves into his Edwardian novel Howards End, perhaps we need both the old and the new, the ancient and the modern, the world of books and art and the world of business and technology? Yes, there is a place for history in our modern world. History matters. And your life matters too. 

Bibliography

1. Baxter, Jason M.; The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind; chapter 4, “Evil Enchantment: Psychology and Pedagogy in the Flat Land”; pp 73-74; Intervarsity Press; 2022. 
2. I owe a concise lay out of these historical terms to Holly at The Homeschool Historian Facebook page.
3. Lewis, C.S.; Weight of Glory, quoted in The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind; chapter 4, “Evil Enchantment: Psychology and Pedagogy in the Flat Land”; pp 73-74; Intervarsity Press; 2022.