If you had the misfortune to do too much of it at school, you’ll probably remember one
thing about history: just how boring it can be.
You might harbour painful memories of the 100 Years War, the War of Spanish
Succession, Crop Rotation in the Middle Ages or - heaven forbid - the good
deeds of Florence Nightingale.
As a result, it wouldn’t be surprising if - nowadays - you tended to steer well clear of the whole topic.
But that would be a pity. The real reason why history is so boring is that we’re not
clear about what it should be for.
Here’s the big reason why history matters: it matters because it can provide us with
solutions to many of the problems of the present.
At its best, history is there to introduce us to some of the things we need but that
aren’t sufficiently visible in the world today.
As a society, we’re very obsessed by what we’re up to right now.
Unknowingly, we’re hugely biased towards the present. The news - which is about the
most prestigious force in the world today - circles obsessively around some of the things
that have happened in the last five minutes
and yet, many of the most important things that we need to nourish, sustain and inspire us
are a lot older.
What we nowadays need above all else are GOOD IDEAS
and history is full of them. Imagine you’re dissatisfied with aspects
of contemporary Capitalism. It might help hugely to read
about the HISTORY of the Levellers, a group of English radicals writing and acting between
1645 and 1650. Or if you question what the point of going
on holiday is, you might dramatically enrich your thoughts by considering the HISTORY of
pilgrimage, especially the motives which people had for trekking off
to visit distant shrines.
History teaches us that THINGS CAN CHANGE.
People haven’t always been as they are now: materialistic and work obsessed.
unable to build nice architecture, over-concered with being “connected”
or hung up on being absurdly thin
There’s an annoying saying that goes: THOSE WHO DON’T KNOW HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.
But that’s suggesting the only thing history is full of is mistakes.
Yet it's as fair to say, those who don't know history
won't be able to IMPROVE the present.
History can also teach us COURAGE. It’s easy to feel, when you’re pressed up against
the present, that things are exceptionally awful right now
but they rarely are, once you open the lens wide enough.
The present isn't unusual in its levels of mediocrity and compromise. Once you read the
letters, the old guys were just as bad. And though our challenges
are of course great, they aren’t exceptional - when compared with say, those facing the
survivors of the sack of Rome or the Lisbon earthquake.
History ends up as a tool for the APPRECIATION of some of our advantages which is easy to miss.
It can teach us to judge our society against other societies rather than against
our ideals. Of course the European Union has problems, but the Habsburg Empire
had them too and many more. Our governments are deeply imperfect, but there have been worse.
Traffic is terrible, but so was the siege of Leningrad.
History can console.
Getting clearer about what history is for should change how the subject is taught. In
the future, we should treat history a little like a doctor treats a medicine cabinet.
Before diving into history, we’d first have to work out what was wrong with us, what we
were lacking in the here and now. We be might diagnosed for a lack of courage, or a spoilt
nature or a hesitation about whether to marry. And we should be prescribed history accordingly
For their part, historians themselves should get clearer about what problems in the present
they’re trying to solve. They should explicitly aim to tell us things about the past that
can help us with issues of today. Not the past for its sake, but the past for our sakes.
Good history should always mean: history with solutions or consolations for today.
Now that could be interesting…