George Finlay said: “Hi Tik; thank you for taking some time
to do these Q&A's. Before going into this question I want to first say I have nothing but respect for
you and the dedication you have to your craft and creating the best work possible (or at the
very least that is how it appears). Considering your discussion of History theory, I struggle to
imagine a better person to ask about this subject but it may come off as well... bellicose.”
It actually doesn’t; it comes across as if it’s being asked by someone with depression.
Or someone that has embraced nihilism. I don’t know if that is the case or not, but
that’s how it comes across. “Cutting to the chase,
why study most history? I understand that certain historical events like say, the [H of World War
Two], may be stark and important reminders of the terrors of ideological perversion,
but other facets like say: Manstein being a cheeky liar, as entertaining a concept as that is,
what is the point? If its a matter of practising a skill, where does this skill get used? And perhaps
more importantly, when concerning vast swathes of Historical literature, from what the Norse Danes
liked to drink to the fashion sense of the Romans, does it really matter? I understand not all this
will be in your purview or that of serious historians, but I can't help but feel when
I engage in historical content: "so what?" Can you help with this dilemma? Thanks, best George”
Many people don’t see the point in studying history. They think it’s boring. They think
it’s just names and dates. And they don’t see how learning about what happened yesterday can
help them today. They just think it’s a waste of time. They assume there’s no practical application
of history in their lives. ‘Oh, I now know Manstein is a cheeky liar, but that doesn’t
get me a promotion, or teach me how to change the tire on my car. It doesn’t impact my life, right?’
But is this really the case? History has practical applications that go beyond
kings and dates. It taught me how to lead others and forge a successful team when I worked in
retail. It has taught me economics and finance, and the important distinction between money and
currency. It has taught me to never believe a politician, and to always be sceptical of the
narrative pumped out by the lamestream media. It has taught me that life is brutal and short,
and that people don’t learn from the mistakes of the past. You cannot help other people unless
they want to be helped, and most people don’t want to be helped. At which point,
you’ve got to leave them to their fate and look after number one, as harsh as that may sound.
Anyone who’s watched my History Theory video knows that history is not the study of the
past. We can’t study the past, we can only study the records of the past. And every record of the
past we have - whether that be swords, castles, audio, video, or words in books - were created
by human hands that were powered by human minds. As a result, when we study history,
we’re not studying the past per se, we’re studying ourselves. We’re studying the human mind. History,
therefore, is the study of the human condition. It is the best way for us to understand how
other people think, and how they view the world. What we’re actually doing when we study history is
getting multiple different perspectives, striking them together, and testing which perspective
makes the most sense given the evidence and the interpretation. During this debate, the best
narratives rise to the top, and the others sink down and get abandoned. I’ve said this before:
history lies in the heart of the debate. But what that really means is that the truth lies in the
heart of the debate, because the ultimate goal of every historian is to get to the objective truth.
During our historical debate, you’ll find some people saying they know the truth,
but their interpretation doesn’t match the evidence, which they then dismiss. Others will use
all the evidence, but not be able to interpret it correctly. Others will speak first without
thinking, while others will contradict themselves and then ignore their contradictions because their
ideology tells them that they’re right. Many will rely on emotions, assumptions and beliefs
to convince you, others will use cold hard reason and logic to rationally support their cause.
What this debate is doing is teaching you, training you,
to think differently, and to think better. You’re not only moving closer to the objective truth,
but you’re also learning how to question things, how not to take things at face value, how to
debate and make a case for something, and learn how to be humble if you’re proven to be incorrect.
These are all skills that have a direct and positive impact on your life, whether that’s when
you’re listening to someone tell you something and you detect the contradictions within their
narrative (proving they’re either lying or have got something wrong), or whether it’s
structuring an argument or an essay, or conducting a presentation, or working as a team,
managing other people, or brainstorming other ideas. The possibilities are honestly endless.
There are two things at the heart of every story. The first is character (or, more specifically,
character development). And the other is conflict. We are the characters at the heart of our own
story, and we are in conflict with the antagonisms around us - other people, the setting, monsters
and our inner demons. The purpose of our lives, then, is to survive and thrive in this hostile
universe. And we can only do that by learning from our mistakes. Now, when I say ‘our’ mistakes,
what I mean is, not just our individual mistakes, but the mistakes others of our species have made
previously. We can look at how other people lived, performed, acted, shaped the world around them,
or interacted with others - we can learn from all of that, then take the best traits or tools
or decisions and apply them to our own lives, so that we can survive today and thrive tomorrow.
The last thing we want to do, though, is learn the wrong lessons, or believe something false, because
if we do that, it can distort our perception of the world and lead us to fail at life. So
it’s important that we filter out the lies and misperceptions, and discover the truth through
free, open and honest debate. This is why Manstein being a cheeky liar is important. Nobody likes
liars. Why? Because liars aren’t telling you the truth, and can get you (and others) in trouble.
As characters in our own story, in a hostile universe, liars are antagonists to our survival.
And maybe you know someone who lies a lot and gets you in trouble. How do you know they’re lying?
Are they actually lying? Or are they telling you the truth, but your perception of reality
is currently distorted, so you only believe they’re lying to you when, in fact, they’re not?
A good way of knowing is to see how other liars operate. I can’t talk about the specific liar
you might know, but we can talk about a liar that everyone knows - like Manstein, or Halder. We can
see what they said, understand the reasons they lied (their motivations), or figure out how they
manipulated the truth to get what they wanted, and how this led to distortions and contradictions,
which, in turn, led to the lie being exposed. Also, it’s not just names and dates. When we look
back in the past, we’re looking into ourselves. We’re choosing what’s most important to us,
and what lessons we want to learn. For some of you, the history of how people lived their day
to day lives - what the Danes drank - may be of great interest. For others, they may want to seek
romance or marriage, and therefore want to know what war paint the native Picts wore on
the battlefield, so that maybe they could apply similar principles to their own fashion-sense.
Maybe you want to know why men carry their brides across the threshold of their homes, a historical
explanation I gave as part of my “Public vs Private” video. Perhaps you want to know how to
conduct a business, or open up a new trade route, or explore the world around you, in which case,
businessmen, economics and explorers may be of a high interest to you. Others may want to know how
to become great leaders - in which case, studying how the leaders of old conducted themselves,
and how they thought outside the box (or didn’t), or how they reacted to the unexpected,
may offer lessons for you to learn, allowing you to perform well when you’re presented with similar
situations. The development of weapons, the training of warriors, or the tactical and
operational aspects of large-scale warfare may be of interest to those in the military,
or those wanting to win games, or be martial artists, or boost the morale of their employees.
Maybe your country is at war, or you or your family has been impacted by war, or maybe you
expect war in the future. Maybe you want to learn how to survive that war. Maybe you want to learn
what inflation is, and how people protected their wealth from it in the past. All these could be
reasons for your interest in history, but I think if you dig deeper, the reason is because you want
to learn something about the past so that you can use that knowledge to better your life today.
Churchill famously said: “The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”
In other words: “The further we look back into the past, the further we can see into the future.”
We can’t predict the future, but we can use history to gauge probabilities of
what could happen next. There’s a rhythm in history, and if you get into the swing of it,
you can avoid stepping on other people’s feet. If you fail to even perceive the rhythm, the
universe will wipe you out. And so, while there is a subjective aspect to this - meaning that:
our interests are specific to us as individuals (my interests are not the same as yours) - we’re
all trying to learn so that we can improve, which will offer us a better chance of survival. Many
people go through life minding their own business, and then get blind-sided by events that they had
no idea were coming. Others who were keyed into the music, heard the same old patterns
and could guess what was coming next. They weren’t surprised when recessions hit,
or when wars start, or when politicians offered totalitarianism to the solution of every problem.
George said that when it comes to events like the ‘H’ of World War 2, we’re reminded of the
terrors of ideological perversion. And the reason this is important is because
ideological perversion is a threat to our own survival.
The totalitarian state is a universal antagonism which destroys the individual character in his
own story. We must avoid the forces around us that wish to enslave and murder us for
their own selfish gain (whilst claiming to be doing what’s right for the whole of humanity).
“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” as the proverb goes. You wouldn’t know this,
and you wouldn’t recognize the same warning signs, unless you understood the true motivations behind
those who wish to enslave us. And you can find that out by reading into the H of World War 2, or
the ideologies behind it, or other similar events. Now, you might assume that some topics of history
are more important than others. And that’s right - because value is subjective. One
man’s trash is another man’s treasure. You need to understand your own concerns, your own wants,
and your own needs. You need to figure out what it is you want to learn, or what is, or is not,
of interest to you. And you need to understand that life is finite. One day you will not exist,
and that day will come sooner than you think. So you haven’t got the luxury to waste your time on
things that do not benefit you (things that don’t help you survive and thrive, and better yourself).
Therefore, you need to hone in on the subjects that interest you the most. Ignore the ones that
don’t. You need to specialise; become a master of a specific field. Many wrongly believe that
they don’t have the time to read a bunch of books on one narrow topic. But I would say the opposite:
we’ve not got the time to read a bunch of books on a wide range of topics. You cannot learn to swim
if all you do is dip your toes in the water. You have to jump in (with supervision). If all you’re
doing is reading one book on a subject, then jumping to the next subject, you’re probably not
seeing much of a benefit, and you’re not honing your craft, and you may even be picking up false
conclusions just because you’re only getting a superficial overview of the world around you.
Also, you need to really specialise. You can’t eat an elephant in one go. And you
don’t want to learn every swimming technique ever created when you jump in for the first time.
You want to learn something simple, get it right, and then move on to something more
difficult. So when you’re choosing your topic, don’t just look at the whole of World War 2;
look at a specific theatre, then choose a specific campaign, and then battle, or maybe even a unit,
or person, or maybe just an event. You want to go as specific as possible in a topic that is
of great interest to you. Something that has some sort of debate surrounding it, or a question you
want answered. Make it concrete. Confirm that that thing happened. How? By using the sources.
Start with the secondary sources - the works of historians. They are your supervision. They will
help you learn to swim. But don’t have one guide, have multiple. Two heads are better than one, and
two historians will offer different perspectives and interpretations. You will discover the
debates, and the lies, and the lessons you want to learn. Then, when you’ve read a few books on
a particular subject, you may want to move on to the primary sources (the memoirs, diaries and
documents) to see if you can flesh things out even further, helping you come to your own conclusions.
Some say you can’t trust the historians. That’s not true: you can’t trust ONE historian. But you
can trust multiple because they’ll all be giving you different perspectives which will help you
discover the truth. History lies in the heart of the debate. And like Newton, the reason I can see
further is because I’m standing on the shoulders of giants. You should too.
To become a master of something, you have to spend time on it. You have to do the work. You have to
put more than a little bit of effort in. It may seem daunting at first (every time I go to make a
video, it feels overwhelming knowing how much work there is to do), but you’ll be surprised how quick
things can develop, and the payoff is huge. So, as the character in your own story,
decide what it is that you want to learn. Figure out what topics really interest you. Pick one
and go specific with it. What question do you want answered? Buy five books on that topic.
Scour the internet for sources, articles, documentaries, and PDFs.
Take notes. Spot the contradictions or mistakes. Find the answers to unanswered questions. Come to
your own conclusions, then discuss them with others. Change your behaviour to reflect the
lessons that you’ve learned. Better yourself. And don’t repeat the mistakes that others are making.
The bottom line is this: you shouldn’t be studying most history; you should only study
what you find meaningful. Leave the rest to others. Learn the lessons you want to learn.
It’s your life - it’s your history. That’s the point of it. Thanks for watching, bye for now.