I was originally going to write a post on the Middle Ground since I'm pretty sure we're going to have a write a midterm essay on it. As I thought about it though, I realized I didn't have much insightful information to add. The goal here is to join the ranks of the elite bloggers who attain 6 or 7 even 9 comments, right? So instead I'm going to digress from the current events we are talking about in class and question certain methods of historical research.
I once had a teacher who was teaching me about the Civil War. He told us that if we ever wanted to do research on the Civil War that it didn't matter how old a book was because history had been set at a certain moment in time. And any book written after the event is going to be just as accurate as any other. Which, at the time, made perfect sense. But lately I've been hearing that history books can be outdated. In fact, it seems that any book written before 1983 is officially outdated. It makes sense in the fact that new information can come to light, but it also confuses me because (especially with the Indians) some of this stuff happened over 400 years ago. Can history really just change like this? Can one tiny little piece of evidence change our entire view of how things happened or how people lived? Maybe all it takes is a historian thinking outside of the box. "Whoa, wait a second. What if, stay with me here, what if the grievances on King George weren't the only reason for the Revolution?" Dude, I think you might be on to something. I find it interesting, and slightly humorous, that history can become outdated.
My second question is about artifacts. It seems that in historical research that everything is taken at face value. And things are taken quite literally. For example, most everything I write is complete BS. I'm usually just trying to be funny. I may convey information in an email or something, but I usually add a humorous spin on it. And a lot of the times I just make things up. Or me and my friends think on the same level. So I could quote Family Guy or tell people that I pulled a Nick, and they'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Now this may have already be considered, but in historical evidence, specifically letters, I wonder if it's considered that someone may be using their own brand of humor that we are currently unfamiliar with and therefore, some things are taken to be fact when they are actually lost in updatification. I have the same problem when I watch CSI. I also have this nightmare that some time in the future after the humans are extinct, that the apes that rule the planet will watch a movie like Gremlins and think that this is a documentary about how the humans died off.
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2 comments:
Haha! Gremlins are scary man! I understand completely where you're coming from. I would have no idea how to go more in depth with what you said about artifacts and I agree with what you're saying.
I have not had any teachers tell me about history books becoming outdated before, but I agree...to some extent. The only reason that I believe a history book could be viewed as "outdated" would be if new information is discovered through some type of archaeologist evidence. Other than that I would not see how history could change.
History does change depending on who writes it, when it is written, what they are trying to prove, and what side they were on. For example, Southerners to this day will tell you the Yankees burned Richmond. It was portrayed in the movies, written in history books, and given as fact in their historical society. Why, because Southerners wrote it. But actually, Southern troops set certain parts of the city on fire to prevent Yankees from taking it, such as stores of cotton, supplies, etc., and just to blame the Yankees. Everyone believed it, even though the Yankee troops present at the time denied it. There are historical markers in Richmond, and even people in the historical society haven't changed their story about Yankees burning their city. But because a historian somewhere, be it Yankee or Southerner, decided to write an unbiased story on the truth, history has changed, and it has become known that the Southern troops burned their own city.
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