Use and abuse of history summary. Howard zinn: use and abuse of history summary Essay Example 2022-12-16
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History is a powerful tool that can be used to understand the past, inform the present, and shape the future. It allows us to learn from the successes and failures of those who came before us, and to gain a deeper appreciation for the cultural, social, and political forces that have shaped our world. However, history can also be abused, either intentionally or unintentionally, in ways that distort the truth, perpetuate myths and stereotypes, or serve narrow political or ideological agendas.
One way that history can be abused is through the selective use of evidence. This can involve cherry-picking facts or sources to support a particular argument, while ignoring or downplaying evidence that contradicts it. This type of abuse is particularly insidious because it can be difficult for the average person to spot, especially if they are not familiar with the subject matter. It is therefore important for historians to be transparent about their sources and to consider a wide range of evidence when interpreting the past.
Another way that history can be abused is through the use of propaganda. This can involve using history as a means of manipulating public opinion or justifying certain actions or policies. Governments, political parties, and other powerful organizations have often used history in this way, either by presenting a distorted or biased view of the past or by promoting certain historical figures or events while downplaying or ignoring others. This type of abuse can be particularly harmful because it can lead to misunderstandings about the past, and can even be used to justify violence or oppression.
A third way that history can be abused is through the misuse of historical analogies. This can involve drawing comparisons between events or situations from different time periods or contexts in a way that oversimplifies or distorts the complexity of the past. This type of abuse is often used to support a particular argument or to appeal to emotions, but it can be misleading and may not accurately reflect the reality of the past.
It is therefore important to be aware of the ways in which history can be abused, and to be critical of the sources and arguments that are presented to us. By being vigilant and questioning the assumptions and biases of those who use history, we can ensure that it is used for the benefit of all, rather than for the narrow interests of a few.
The Use and Abuse of History, or, How the Past is Taught
But leave out the side notes of the Bibliography: 1. For when one considers the life-history of such an ancient fact, the amount of reverence paid to it for generations—whether it be a custom, a religious creed, or a political principle,—it seems presumptuous, even impious, to replace it by a new fact, and the ancient congregation of pieties by a new piety. But that in itself would be using history in a partial way and again proving history his used to prove points and emphasis ideas based on who is telling them. In this essay, which he later expanded upon in his book The End of History and the Last Man in 1992, Fukuyama builds on the knowledge of Hegel, Marx and Kojève. I picked it up with high expectations — MacMillan is the much-heralded author of Paris 1919 — and was almost immediately disappointed by a style crafted to offend and interest no one. Which of these two forces is the higher and more decisive? In this respect, it seems to me that it would have been helpful, in this new edition, to have been given some indication of how the book fits into our current intellectual climate, and of how the various particulars with which the author deals illustrate a whole comparatively new arena of debate.
. They may not perhaps continue a process, but they live out of time, as contemporaries: and thanks to history that permits such a company, they live as the Republic of geniuses of which Our low comedian has his word on this too with his wonderful dialectic, which is just as genuine as its admirers are admirable. History should not frighten away the common readers with the obscure academic expressions or jargons. Thus the masses have to produce the great man, chaos to bring forth order; and finally all the hymns are naturally sung to the teeming chaos. Whoever asks his friends whether they would live the last ten or twenty years over again, will easily see which of them is born for the "super-historical standpoint": they will all answer no, but will give different reasons for their answer. They're never going to get thanked for that. They confused the experience of defeated peoples, e.
A religion, for example, that has to be turned into a matter of historical knowledge by the power of pure justice, and to be scientifically studied throughout, is destroyed at the end of it all. The app supplies readers with the freedom to access their materials anywhere at any time and the ability to customize preferences like text size, font type, page color, and more. Unable to escape the problem of selection, the historian is at the mercy of perspective. The motive for that is safety, because the historian who breaks the pattern causes stares and suspicions. Our modern culture is for that reason not a living one, because it cannot be understood without that opposition. Americans are often mocked for a shallow optimism, and maybe our history has been filtered through that distorting lens. Or, is there another explanation? It is omission or deemphasis of important data.
She says they are too concerned with social history and theorizing and not enough about what actually happened among the most important decision-makers in the past. It is because of this blinding amount of knowledge that one must give up all value systems of judgement and finally retreat to stupidity: We feel that one thing sounds different from another, that one thing produces a different effect from another: increasingly to lose this sense of strangeness, no longer to be very much surprised at anything, finally to be pleased with everything — that is then no doubt called the historical sense, historical culture. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. It aims to find a better balance between these two forces which are represented by the historical and the unhistorical respectively. Fundamental questions regarding what history is and what it can do have been avoided.
Thirdly, the instincts of a nation are thwarted, the maturity of the individual arrested no less than that of the whole. We can now judge how these virtuosi stand towards the claim of the modern man to a higher and purer conception of justice. It's been said that 'history is written by the victors' and MacMillan, a noted historian, believes this is true as do I. Facts still require a subject to tie into a comprehensible whole, and it is precisely this synthesis where the subjectivity of the historian seeps through: And may an illusion not creep into the word objectivity even in its highest interpretation? There are very many truths which are unimportant; problems that require no struggle to solve, to say nothing of sacrifice. And while perhaps it's unfair to chastise MacMillan, writing in the late 2000s, for not having predicted the rise of Flat Earthers when she wrote that "arguments over the position of the earth and the sun" belong to the past, it's mindboggling that she then goes on to assert that scientific racism and sexism are things of the past, when sadly we have daily proof that they are powerful forces still. But it is just there that we find the reality of a true unhistorical culture—and in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, an unspeakably rich and vital culture.
The Use and Abuse of History: Or How the Past is Taught to Children
But who is to say what is a horrible mistake or a courageous act of valor? By removing the varied causes and conditions of the past, it inspires through deception. . The Revolution was made to preserve our antient indisputable laws and liberties, and that antient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty. The first generation of youth that pursues this will suffer from both the sickness of the historic as well as the antidotes of the unhistoric and suprahistoric. It is so with all great things "that never prosper without some illusion," as Every people, every man even, who would become ripe, needs such a veil of illusion, such a protecting cloud.
Future studies could test whether: ImRs as a stand-alone treatment leads to a. Such history would be quite against the analytical and inartistic tendencies of our time, and even be considered false. Use and Abuse of History 56-57 Two sides of the same story, though both sides are never told. The objective is deconstructive because, as we have discussed already, history progresses through the unjust, unhistorical force of life. For life itself is a kind of handicraft that must be learned thoroughly and industriously, and diligently practised, if we are not to have mere botchers and babblers as the issue of it all! Grand challenges for personality and social psychology: moving beyond the replication crisis It is then up to the research community and the wider public to judge the importance of the research, and potentially build on it and develop the research question further.
Howard Zinn: Use and Abuse of History Summary Essay
He has a divine insight into the original meaning of the hieroglyphs, and comes even to be weary of the letters that are continually unrolled before him. What facts are left out? Greek tragedy, Renaissance painting as canonical. . The first is that we embody the classical world before setting our sights beyond it, in exceeding it. To accomplish this, history must again be distorted.
The Uses and Abuses of History by Margaret MacMillan
The author used plenty of examples to support her opinions. The book is not a philosophical tour de force. At last, like the logical disciple of To fix this degree and the limits to the memory of the past, if it is not to become the gravedigger of the present, we must see clearly how great is the " plastic power " of a man or a community or a culture; I mean the power of specifically growing out of one's self, of making the past and the strange one body with the near and the present, of healing wounds, replacing what is lost, repairing broken moulds. One explanation might have portrayed him as a political mutant—a freak selected by the public to be a weapon in its revolt against the established order. He is careful to preserve what survives from ancient days, and will reproduce the conditions of his own upbringing for those who come after him; thus he does life a service. It is also evident that the shortage of raw materials and labour affected the economy massively, furthermore with the SS remaining loyal to themselves; murdering six million Jews instead of seeking labour.
That is to say, the only way the ironic man can justify his impotent existence is to take up the cynical view that history not only does not require individual action but is best pushed forward if we surrender ourselves to the world-process altogether. This short book by the historian Margaret MacMillan is basically a compendium of many controversies over history in a variety of countries. So the modern German believes also in the æterna veritas of his education, of his kind of culture: and yet this belief will fail—as the Platonic state would have failed—if the mighty German lie be ever opposed by the truth, that the German has no culture because he cannot build one on the basis of his education. MM says that "professional historians have largely been abandoning the field to amateurs" - that's a bold thing to say. This is a classic example of history being hijacked by identity politics. Response to Howard Zinn article History is something we constantly refer to progress ourselves as humans, we learn from our mistakes and continue to strive from our successes.
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