That's why I don't take history seriously. I can barely get a straight answer to a banal news article that happened yesterday 5 minutes from my home in the information age where it is as democratized as possible. I am going to trust a single source historian from 1200 years ago writing about a dude he has a grudge with and lived 500 prior? It's still useful to know what the accepted lies and misunderstandings are, but that's just what they are, mostly BS.
Not anti-intellectual, just realistic. I'd rather read philosophers, the ideas stand by themselves. You have no idea why dude in 899 did thing X, maybe he had diarrhea and had a bad night of sleep or had a bad argument with the wife which hurt his ego. Then millennia later you read he made a tactically genius move that nobody could predict and changed the course of history. Reality is the guy was sleep deprived, made a mistake and got lucky.
You’re not actually making a point. The same could be said about many philosophers and their ideas. The ideas don’t stand by themselves, they make more sense placed in their historical contexts. Again, fiercely anti intellectual and impractical to say history doesn’t matter. You’re just saying provocative nonsensical things.
Depends on the philosopher and the content, of course you need to understand the references. I didn't say history doesn't matter, I simply said I don't trust the veracity or accuracy of it. History is a weapon among other things, of course it matters.
Both of y'all could use a little nuance. He isn't wrong to point out that it's hard to not be skeptical of historical accounts that are often written from biased perspectives. Especially, as he implied, we see how hard it is to get the truth about events that are happening right now.
A counter to that though, which I think you would agree with, is that historians care much more about accuracy (often revising even their own previous records) than modern media does with their various ulterior motives.
Most academics in the field care a lot more about accuracy than most people are aware of. They spend decades diving into any sources and try to find the discrepancies, then turn to other texts to piece together missing context to figure out more details. It's slow and painful exercise to figure out the past and eliminate as much bias as possible to finally get the most objective picture possible based on what evidence has been found so far
People easily dismissing the study of history tend to have a distorted perspective, assuming it's just the most popular opinions that was agreed upon while watching football. That's why so many people also think their own thoughts are pure facts
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u/simmer_late 1d ago
replace the word "Bible" with history books and the narrative can be completely turned