Wednesday, March 2, 2011

4 Re-introduction to History

“Those who bore witness to a slaughter may forget, but whatever which is writ in blood or ember- eternity remembers.” –A.Javier

It’s either people are forgetting history’s significance or they intentionally forget. Remember that history is the story of why we are the way we are now; how we came to be. Just how can anybody develop a proper panorama of the present or the future if there is no benchmark to compare it to?

File:Gyzis 006 (Ηistoria).jpeg
Historia (Allegory of History)
By Nikolaos Gysis (1892)
1.      History is inarguably one of the few valid bases of judgment humanity can ever think of.

2.      Nobody can describe history with absolute precision because of the purely subjective nature of observation (variability among everybody’s perception). Thus history is a realm that is constantly under or threat of bias.

3.      Sometimes there can be innumerable renditions of history, it is easier to say that it is the best example of a metanarrative in the world.

a.      This is problematic because we need to institute a reasonable uniformity to it which helps to curb the boundless interpretations that might ensue from an incoherent imagination. (Remember that lucid and rational people don’t change history or bear false account of it, unless when they’re lying of course).  

4.     History is giving account to our past in order to gain insight to our own predilections and vulnerabilities. It helps us plan and interact accordingly in the future and, as much as possible, avoid the mistakes that we or our ancestors did in the past.

Comments :

4 Reactions to “ Re-introduction to History ”
Fun and Fearless said...
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Nice post! The complexity of history is one of reasons why I now enjoy reading historical fiction. It's like hitting two birds with one stone. Anyway, yes, if only people will not try to efface their past, many mistakes could have been avoided. ^_^

Arvin said...
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I remembered a scene from my most favorite anime. That anime's title is Legend of the Galactic Heroes. One of the protaganist named Yang Wenli said that why is that we need to study history if history is just a recorded document of the past. But he added that we need to study history because even though eye witnesses of that event in recorded history has a little info on what had really happen. A historian studying every perspective of the recorded document and the use of reasoning will put him/her more knowledgeable than the witness alone.

On the POV of Logic, past events that are used in predicting the future events can not draw a 100% accurate answer. That's why predicting an event no matter what its basis is an inductive reasoning.

AIS said...
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@the seeker girl: PETA hates that idiom. But there's just some people who never learn.

@arvin: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
—George Santayana

Fun and Fearless said...
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Whoa. I overlooked that. I think I'm one of those who do not learn. Hahaha! ^_^ I should have said "hitting two targets with one arrow" or something not zoologically related, right? Now don't ask me to make the 'targets' more expilcit. Otherwise, I might get myself in serious trouble in the future. ^_^

Re-introduction to History ~ SHOCKING TRUTHS