Philosophy of History

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In the first grade our class was instructed to color dinosaurs. Everybody fought over the green crayons until the teacher ordered everyone to shut up and wait for a crayon. Being blessed with slow reflexes and impatience, I grabbed a purple one and proceeded to color my dinosaur. The other kids at the table began laughing at my purple dinosaur and quickly the rest of the class joined them. Almost in unison, they all said “Dinosaurs aren't purple!” My response: “who here has seen a dinosaur? Nobody? Then how do you know there weren't purple dinosaurs?” Turns out there are purple dinosaurs and his name is Barney. I was right, and in my mind I've been right ever since.

Ok, that sounds a little conceited and delusional, let me clarify. That is likely the only place where that moment in time exists, in my memory of it, so whether or not it actually went down like that is irrelevant. If space=time, then the space occupied in my conscious memory, and the possible physical location(s) in my brain where that memory is stored, is probably the only place in the universe where that bit of information exists. Therefor, that's how I remember it so that's how it happened. I'm right and nobody can dispute it. Unless somebody else from the class remembers, then we would have two perspectives on the alleged incident and both would be right. However I'm still more right because I just typed it and now it's recorded from my point-of-view.

I think of history in much the same way. There are some facts such as dates and locations, these are what make up typical elementary history education (although some of those are disputable, i.e. when did the War of 1812 end?). However, most of the interesting aspects are a matter of opinion and perspective. The more time that has passed since the event, the fewer perspectives there are as the majority of unwritten first-hand accounts are lost with those who held their memories. It is often said of history that it is written by the victors, indeed most of what is considered mainstream history is what has been written by victors and after-the-fact third parties. I've heard the carefully crafted victor version of history since grade school. While not necessarily untrue, it's been heavily revised and cherry-picked to aid various political goals over the years. Much of this revision takes place after all the witnesses and participants have died. Sometimes it doesn't even take that long. Once I realized that there a lot of historical aspects that get left out mainstream discussions, the holes in revised versions started becoming glaringly apparent.

To me, the most interesting aspects of history lie in the personal letters and accounts of those whom were there. Their stories are the real history, not the third-party outsider perspectives offered by historians born long after the event has passed. We are experiencing an evolutionary epoch in human evolution and many of those little historic moments (that collectively make up the big historic moments) are now on video and in social media posts. Future historians will not need to quibble so much about details when the entire event has been filmed from thousands perspectives that collectively tell a more objective story. Videos can obviously be altered, but not nearly as easily as unverified war stories and third-hand outsider accounts. There more videos there are, the more difficult it is to control the narrative. Eyewitness accounts told after-the-fact are the storyteller's subjective version of the event. BS war stories are much more difficult to get away with when nearly all the witnesses have video cameras. Brian Williams versions of history are becoming obsolete.


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