Why History Matters | Patrick Allitt | TEDxEmory
Summary
TLDRThe transcript explores the perception of history and its evolution in personal relevance as one ages. Initially, history may seem a dry list of names and dates, but it becomes more engaging as individuals recognize the impact of historical events on contemporary life and their own experiences. The speaker reflects on the difficulty of predicting the future based on historical patterns, using examples from the 20th century, such as the misinterpretation of events leading to World War I and II, and the challenge of drawing accurate lessons from history. The narrative also touches on the fallibility of historical predictions, highlighting how past visions of the future were often far from the actual outcomes. The summary concludes with the importance of studying history to understand the present, while acknowledging the limitations in foreseeing future events due to the complexity of human nature and historical contexts.
Takeaways
- 📚 **Importance of History**: Initially, children may find history boring due to its complexity and distance from their personal experiences.
- 👵👴 **Personal Connection**: As people age, they start to relate history to their own lives and the lives of their contemporaries, making it more interesting.
- 🌐 **Changing World**: The realization that history is not static and is intertwined with current events often comes with parenthood and personal involvement in historical events.
- 📖 **Technological Evolution**: Describing one's life to children can highlight the rapid technological advancements and how they have become an integral part of everyday life.
- 🤔 **Predicting the Future**: Despite studying history, it is challenging to predict the future due to the complexity and unpredictability of human behavior and societal changes.
- 🗣️ **Misuse of History**: Politicians often misuse history by claiming it teaches lessons, which can be misleading as history is more nuanced and doesn't always provide clear guidance for the future.
- 🇺🇸 **American History Narrative**: The self-congratulatory narrative of American history as a moral progression is emotionally satisfying but may not reflect the complexity of historical events.
- 🧐 **Understanding Perspectives**: To truly understand history, one must empathize with all sides of a conflict, recognizing that each believed they were right.
- 🤷♂️ **Difficulties in Learning from History**: The past provides no easy lessons, as evidenced by the misinterpretation of events leading to World War I and II, and the varied responses to them.
- 🌟 **Historical Amnesia**: The failure to correctly interpret historical events, such as atrocities during wars, can lead to repeated mistakes in judgment and action.
- ⏰ **Unpredictability of Innovation**: Predictions about the future, especially technological advancements, are often far from reality, showing how hard it is to anticipate change.
Q & A
Why do children often find history uninteresting?
-Children may find history uninteresting because they perceive textbooks as too thick and heavy, and the content seems remote from their own experiences, consisting of a catalogue of names, dates, and events that they feel disconnected from.
How does one's perspective on history change as they grow older?
-As people age, they start to find history more interesting as they begin to notice the outcomes of their contemporaries' lives, the changes in the world, and their own involvement in historical events, making history feel more relevant and less remote.
Why does history become more engaging when studying it through personal experience?
-Personal experience makes history more relatable and easier to connect with. Describing one's life or the world they grew up in can fascinate children and provide a more tangible connection to the past than abstract concepts or events.
What was the technological marvel mentioned in the script that seemed extraordinary in the late 1970s?
-The technological marvel mentioned was a device that functioned like a typewriter attached to a TV screen. As one typed, the words appeared on the screen, and if a mistake was made, the words could be adjusted to make room for the correction.
Why do politicians' claims that history teaches us lessons often prove to be false?
-Politicians' claims that history teaches lessons are often false because history is complex and does not provide tidy moral lessons. People and nations have different perspectives and interests, making it difficult to draw universally applicable conclusions from historical events.
What is the common misconception about historians being able to predict the future?
-The common misconception is that historians, due to their study of the past, have the ability to predict future events. However, the history of attempts to predict the future is filled with failures, indicating that such predictions are inherently challenging and unreliable.
How does the speaker describe the typical American self-perception in historical narratives?
-The speaker describes the typical American self-perception as one of moral superiority and a series of moral victories, where the U.S. overcomes problems like the British rule, slavery, and 20th-century dictators, each time elevating itself to a higher moral plane.
Why is it important to understand the perspective of historical figures who are now considered wrong?
-Understanding the perspective of those who are now considered wrong is important because it allows for a more nuanced comprehension of history. It helps to see the conflicts not as a simple right versus wrong but as a conflict between different beliefs of right, which can lead to a more empathetic and complete understanding of past events.
What is the difficulty in drawing lessons from historical events, as illustrated by the speaker?
-The difficulty lies in the complexity and variability of human behavior and historical circumstances. Drawing lessons from history is challenging because different situations require different responses, and past lessons may not always apply or may even lead to misguided decisions when applied inappropriately.
What is the paradox the speaker refers to regarding the study of history and predicting the future?
-The paradox is that despite a deep understanding of history, people, including policymakers, can still make significant mistakes in predicting the future or in applying historical lessons to current situations. This shows that knowing history does not necessarily prevent errors in judgment about future events.
Why are predictions about the future often inaccurate, as demonstrated by the speaker?
-Predictions about the future are often inaccurate because they are constrained by the knowledge and imagination of the time when they are made. Unforeseen technological advancements, social changes, and other developments can render even well-informed predictions obsolete, highlighting the limitations of human foresight.
Outlines
📚 The Evolution of Interest in History
The first paragraph discusses the common perception of history as a dry and distant subject for children, characterized by a dense array of names, dates, and events. As people age, they begin to find history more engaging, especially as they recognize the relevance of historical events to their own lives and the lives of their contemporaries. The speaker shares personal anecdotes, such as describing a world without modern technology to his children and recounting his experience with early word processors. The paragraph also touches on the fallibility of politicians who claim history provides clear lessons and the dangers of oversimplified, self-congratulatory narratives of history.
🌎 The Complexities and Moral Ambiguities of History
The second paragraph delves into the moral complexities of historical events, challenging the notion that history is a simple struggle between right and wrong. It critiques the self-satisfying way American history is sometimes taught, which portrays the country as consistently overcoming challenges and ascending to higher moral ground. The speaker argues that history is more nuanced, with tragedies and conflicts that cannot be easily categorized as good versus evil. The paragraph emphasizes the importance of understanding the perspectives of all parties involved in historical conflicts and the need for historians to use their imagination to empathize with different viewpoints.
🤔 The Difficulty of Learning from History
The third paragraph explores the difficulty of drawing lessons from history, using the example of the First World War and the misconceptions that led to it. It discusses the false atrocity stories that influenced public opinion and the subsequent regret when these stories were found to be untrue. The speaker also highlights the failure to act quickly against Hitler's rise, influenced by the desire to avoid another catastrophic war. The paragraph illustrates how past experiences can lead to both excessive credulity and unwarranted skepticism, making it challenging to apply historical lessons to current crises.
🚀 The Futile Pursuit of Predicting the Future
The fourth paragraph addresses the futility of predicting the future, using examples from Popular Mechanics magazine and a French illustration from 1900. These predictions failed to foresee significant events and developments, such as the moon landing, civil rights and women's movements, and the rise of computers. The speaker concludes that while studying history is crucial for understanding the world, the complexity of human nature and historical circumstances makes it impossible to predict the future with certainty.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡History
💡Personal Experience
💡Technology
💡Change
💡Remoteness
💡Contemporaries
💡Moral Complexity
💡Prediction
💡Lessons of History
💡World War I and II
💡Atrocities
Highlights
Children often find history dull and disconnected from their own experiences.
As people age, they start to find history more interesting as they see how it relates to their own lives.
Parents can connect with their children by sharing their own experiences and how they fit into the broader scope of history.
Describing the world of the past, like the 1950s, can fascinate children and help them better understand history.
Witnessing the creation and adoption of new technologies, like word processors, can be a powerful way to connect with history.
Politicians often misuse history by claiming it provides clear lessons for the future, which is a flawed perspective.
Studying history in the US can be very self-congratulatory, painting America as constantly overcoming problems and becoming morally superior.
History is more complex and does not provide tidy moral lessons. It involves understanding different perspectives, even those we may disagree with.
Historical conflicts are often between two sides that both believe they are right, not simply right vs. wrong.
It's important for historians to use imagination to empathize with different perspectives in order to truly understand history.
Drawing lessons from history is difficult - past attempts to apply lessons from previous wars have often led to misguided decisions.
Predictions about the future based on current trends are often way off the mark, as innovations and societal changes are hard to foresee.
Studying history is crucial to understanding the world, but it does not enable us to predict the future with any certainty.
History is a complex tapestry of human experiences and perspectives that cannot be reduced to simple moral lessons or predictable patterns.
Despite the challenges, studying history is essential to gaining a deeper understanding of the world and human nature.
Transcripts
you
children often dislike history they find
the textbook too thick and too heavy and
everything inside it just too remote
from their own experience at first
history seems like a long catalogue of
names and dates and people and places
which you've got nothing to do with them
at all it's all seems too remote to have
any real interest to their own lives but
then as people get older they sometimes
find a history which used to be dull
starts becoming a little bit more
interesting they start noticing for
example that people their contemporaries
some of them are doing very well in life
perhaps unexpectedly well others who
have such promise to begin with have
fallen by the wayside and it's very
difficult to explain why some have done
so well and others not so well and it's
fascinating to watch the way in which
the world is changing once you're in the
in your forties and once you're a parent
and once your own children are studying
history then very often you'll have the
experience that your children will say
that they're studying some aspect of
history in which you yourself were
involved and then you realise history
isn't just all finished once and for all
it isn't closed up in those books it's
continuing right up to the present and
we're part of it and as you begin to
describe to your children the world that
you grew up in very often they find that
fascinating it's easier for them to to
connect with than with the descriptions
of what the presidents did or the great
Wars and so on now as you describe your
life or as I describe my life I was born
in the late 1950s I described in my
child a world of astonishing hardships
when we didn't have personal computers
and we didn't have cell phones and when
if we wanted to make a phone call we
actually used a heavy object which was
wired into the wall and with which we
had to do a cumbersome rotary motion to
get the number we wrote with pens and we
listened to music on record players with
delicate needles and the kids say wow
that's sounds so primitive
how did you manage in such a world to
which of course your answer is it didn't
seem in the least bit primitive at the
time it seemed absolutely normal
now you also realize that you've been
present at the creation of some
technologies which have since become
entirely commonplace for example I was a
graduate student at the University of
California in Berkeley starting in the
late 70s and into the early eighties I
had a girlfriend who was working as a
temp at the law firm and one day she
came back from work and said to me
they've got this incredible thing at
work it's like a typewriter attached to
a TV and when you type the words it
there's no paper when you type the words
in the words come up on the TV screen
and if you miss a word you can make it
happen so that the other words move
aside and create a place for this word
to go in and we looked at each other in
absolute astonishment at the concept of
a machine like that and of course a few
years later we'd all got one and now the
idea of living without one does sound
like extraordinary hardship now you
often hear history often hear
politicians saying history teaches us of
that and as soon as you hear a
politician say that you know that the
next thing he says is going to be false
just just as when you hear a politician
say the American people as soon as you
hear that you also know the next thing
is going to be false because of course
different people want different things
and they disagree very profoundly but
it's widely imagined that historians are
clairvoyants that their study of the
past enables them to understand what's
going to happen in the future I give
talks often and usually my audience
listens respectfully to my description
of some historical episode but then when
it comes time for questions and answers
they nearly always say what's going to
happen in the future now I'd like to be
able to tell you that this man is a
history teacher and that what he's doing
with these equations is putting in all
the relevant historical data to show us
what's going to happen next but actually
he's not a history teacher and the
history of the attempt to predict the
future is a history of uninterrupted
failure
now one of the particular pleasures of
studying history in the United States -
which obviously I'm an immigrant is that
it's possible in America to study
history in a very very self-satisfied
moralizing way and it goes like this
perhaps you learned American history
like this as well back in the 1700s
America had a problem and the problem
was the wicked wicked British but then
his overcame that problem in the
American Revolutionary War and lifted
itself up onto a superior moral plane
and and then in the 19th century America
had a problem
it was the problem of slavery but then
it's overcame that problem in a great
Civil War and lifted itself on to a
higher moral plane and in the 20th
century America had a serious problem
the great tyrants and dictators but it's
overcame them first Hitler then the
Soviet Union and lifted itself onto a
still higher moral plane now that's a
very very emotionally gratifying way of
studying history isn't it because it
implies that history is the struggle of
right against wrong in which right
dependably wins have you ever had this
experience in fact I hope you've had it
when you're reading a good book or
watching a good movie you get to the end
with a feeling of very very profound
cathartic satisfaction the couple get
married or they overcome the obstacles
to their love or the bad guys are
defeated by the good ones and you're
left with a feeling ah yes it happened
the way it was supposed to now that's
all right in fiction but if you have
that feeling after watching a historical
documentary or reading a history book it
probably means that it's a very bad book
or a very bad documentary because
history is not like that it won't give
us satisfying lessons with a tidy moral
history is much more complicated than
that
you couldn't possibly study this very
very sort of satisfying upward ascent if
you're studying the history of Poland or
Ireland a history of Poland is almost
uninterrupted tragedy you could say the
same from
Irish history too now and again glimmers
of light break out but they're quickly
snuffed out by horrible circumstances
but of course Poland into Ireland just
as real as America and their historical
experience is just as valid for people
who are trying to actually understand
what the world is like now isn't it
equally true that when we're studying
history just as when we're reading
fiction or watching movies
we want to take sides and we want to
take sides with the ones whom we
perceive to be morally superior
for example the way in which the
American Civil War is now taught almost
universally is that the Union was right
because it was against slavery and the
Confederates were wrong because they
were in favor of slavery and I sometimes
say to classes when was the last moment
that the Confederacy could realistically
have expected to win the Civil War and
I've had students say but the
Confederates were the losers almost as
though they'd marched into battle saying
we're the losers you've only got to
think about this for a moment to realize
that it's not the conflict of right
against right right right against wrong
it's the conflict of right against right
not in the sense that we think the
Confederacy was right but in the sense
that we've got to understand that they
thought so but they marched into battle
with it with a strong conviction that
they were right and that they were
justified and that they were even
willing to risk dying for it if you
don't understand that if you don't
provisionally put yourself in the shoes
of the Confederate soldier you're never
really going to be able to understand
what happened at least as they're taking
places historical conflicts are always
the conflict between right and right
because nobody's willing to say this is
a bad cause and I'm willing to die for
it and in fact even though as a
historian obviously you've got to follow
the rules of the evidence you've got to
follow where the documents take you
nevertheless you've got to be able
you've got to be capable of flights of
imagination you've got to be able to
stand in the shoes not only of the Union
soldier and the Confederate soldier but
in the shoes of the abolitionists a man
like Frederick
or in the shoes of the slaves themselves
what did the world look like to them
what were they thinking about and what
were they hoping for and in the shoes of
Abraham Lincoln and in northerners the
shoes of northerners who said the
Confederate states have seceded we
should let them go you need to be able
to understand all of them and then you
need to be able to show how they came
together now as I mentioned a moment ago
it would be nice to think that history
taught us tiny lessons and that's after
studying in episode you could say this
is what happens here's what it meant and
here's the lesson that it teaches now I
want to show you with a little sample
from the 20th century how difficult it
is to do that the lessons of the First
World War which broke out in 1914 and
raged across Europe until 1918 involving
the Americans during its last two years
now when the war had finally finished
and the dazed survivors looked about and
reckoned with the fact that 20 million
people had been killed they said to one
another why did it happen what did we do
wrong which caused it to happen and the
answer that many of them came up with
was this in a highly mechanised world
which has got railroads and trucks and
machine guns and all kinds of powerful
technology aircraft submarines everyone
was on a hair-trigger alert everyone
thought the war would be short if it
broke out at all
and that therefore it to mobilize first
and to get into the field quickly would
give us an overpowering advantage so
everybody rushed to combat let's make
sure that we don't do that again after
the Second World War in 1945 when more
than 60 million people were killed
the survivors looked about themselves
and said how did it happen how did we
come into this war and what can we do to
make sure that something like that never
happens again
and the answer that came up with was
this we were too slow to resist Hitler
we saw his growing menace across Europe
the analyst the occupation of the
Sudetenland his gradual
exertion of more and more power for
Germany in Central Europe but instead of
fighting him quickly we weighted the
responsible politicians of Europe said
we need to appease Hitler why did they
say that because they wanted to prevent
what they understood to be the
unnecessary circumstance of war such as
it had happened back in 1914 of course
there were people like Winston Churchill
who said we're going to have to fight
him sooner or later we might as well do
it sooner when Churchill was saying that
in the mid in late 1930s he sounded like
an old dinosaur completely superannuated
by time though of course he turned out
to be absolutely right now to make
matters worse there's the question of
atrocities during the first world war
after the German army invaded Belgium in
northern France atrocity stories
circulated in Britain in France and then
in America that the Germans as they
advanced had crucified Belgian prisoners
of war that they'd raped the Belgian
nuns and that they were laying a path of
horrifying cruelty and destruction
before themselves when the Americans
entered the war it wasn't the only
propagandists who believe these stories
it was also ministers of the gospel and
many ministers went up into their
pulpits and said it's true that Jesus
was a pacifist but that's only because
he didn't have an enemy as evil as the
Germans if Jesus was alive today he'd
pick up a bayonet and drive it into the
body of the first German he met it's a
it's a religious duty to fight against
the enemy now when the First World War
finished it turned out that nearly all
these stories were completely false and
the clergy felt a very deep sense of
shame that they'd let themselves be
taken in by it
and said to themselves we're not going
to let that happen again
if we hear such stories we'll remember
the experience we had here in order that
it won't happen twice which is why when
in 1940 and 41 and 42 stories started to
come out from Germany about the fact
that the entire Jewish population was
being rounded up and put into
slave labor camps and then
systematically exterminated many of them
said we heard such stories before and we
were believe them and we were wrong to
believe them and the result is of course
that when the camps were finally
liberated in 1945 by the Allied armies
they realized with a horrified sense of
recognition that they'd been wrong twice
they were wrong the first time for being
too credulous and they were wrong the
second time for being too skeptical that
seems to me like a very very vivid
demonstration of the fact that it's
difficult to draw the right lesson from
history which lesson should we apply
every subsequent foreign policy crisis
has been confronted by exactly this
question there's a wonderful folk theory
of a harrowing photograph from Vietnam
now the American policymakers who took
the Americans into Vietnam were
remembering the lesson of the Second
World War
you've got to fight the enemy early when
he's far away and weak because if you
don't you're going to have to fight him
later when he's stronger and closer yeah
that was the lesson which they derived
from the events of the late 1930s and
Hitler's rise to power and it seemed
like a very very persuasive and powerful
lesson it wasn't that they were mad or
reckless or haven't studied history
enough they knew a lot about it and yet
they still made what nearly all of us I
think would regard as a terrible mistake
that's one of the great paradoxes we
need to come to terms with now the next
thing I'd like to talk to you about is
how hard it is to predict the future and
in the 1950s lots of magazines had
articles saying what's life going to be
like in the year 2000 here's one from
Popular Mechanics and it shows an
American farm from the year 2000 in
which each ear of corn is big enough to
load down the truck and you've got the
cosmic-ray distributor and various other
useful devices to help along the way and
oh here's a good one as well Popular
Mechanics magazine it said what's the
world going to be like in night in the
year 2000 well every workday dad's going
to go to work in his nuclear-powered
autogyro
and mom's going to stay at home in her
nuclear-powered kitchen in other words
every single interesting thing which
actually happened in the period between
1950 and 2000 didn't get mentioned and
the reason it didn't get mentioned was
because they haven't happened nothing
about the trip to the moon nothing about
the civil rights movement nothing about
the women's movement nothing about
miniaturization nothing about computers
all the stuff which actually happened
and of course that's true because
predictions are far far too difficult to
make predictions tell you a lot about
the time that the prediction was made
that was by studying these predictions
we can know what was on the mind of
people in 1950 but we can't know
anything at all about the year 2000 and
of course now that we've gone past the
year 2000 it's simply a source of fun to
look back and say how wrong could they
possibly be I also found this picture
this is from a French prediction in 1900
of what the year 2000 is going to be
lovely you know the whale powered bus I
mean it's true that we it's true that we
do now have submarines but I think they
got that slightly wrong in one
particular more than one particular and
from that frame the same French series
since I'm an educator I took a lot of
pleasure from this one as well this is
the imagination of the schoolroom of the
year 2000 in which the teacher there on
the right is loading textbooks into the
hopper and one kid you know that the
eraser monitor kid is sort of grinding
the handle and somehow the information
is also being transmuted into sparks
which then flow into these headsets and
straight into the students heads it's
that super that's the that's the 1900
idea of what the year 2000 is going to
be like
so my conclusion it's actually a rather
cautious one it's this that we've got to
study history to have any idea at all
about what the world is like without it
we're blind and groping in the dark but
even when we do now a lot about history
we're still circumscribed by the
complexity of humanity and the
complexity of historical circumstances
such that we can't possibly know what's
going to happen in the future thank you
very much indeed
you
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