On this page, observations of various kinds will appear that are related to big history teaching as well as to big history in general.

 

 

 

 

June 11, 2020

 

While seeking to portray in academic history what ‘really’ happened as well as possible with the greatest possible distance, the biggest problem may be to avoid value judgments such as good and bad (but many other value judgments as well). If that does not work out well enough, one will need to rethink one’s efforts until it does work. Based on such studies, people can then form their personal opinions and value judgments.

 

Unfortunately, the academic study of history that emerged in the 19th century did not always have such noble aims in mind, but instead often rather sought to provide a proud and exemplary past to the peoples of the emerging nation-states, most notably in Europe and the Americas, but later also almost everywhere else in the world. As a result, value judgments and the ‘painting’ of historical ‘landscapes’ have often become conflated in ways that are not permissible from a strictly empirical academic point of view.

 

Would you want to fly in an airplane that was designed by using a mix of the personal value judgments of the firm's management and the laws of aerodynamics? I'd prefer only the latter. Surely, the needs that airplanes will serve determine their shape to a considerable extent. But mixing the laws of physics with personal opinions while designing an aircraft is not a good idea.

 

Yet such conflated views have permeated the histories of virtually all nation-states to the extent that today almost everybody appears to think, and feel, that this approach to reconstructing the past represents true history, and that those historians who practice it are the heroes by excellence in their profession.

 

For whatever reason some of these academic historians consider themselves to be public prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges united in one single person. That is not a good idea within law for obtaining balanced views, and judgments, of any situation. And for the same reason it is not a good idea within academia either.

 

Furthermore, the writing of histories, and most notably their acceptation within wider circles, depends on the relations of power and dependency as they exist. When certain groups possess powerful positions, they may tend to focus their histories first of all on themselves as well as on what are considered their historical examples, predecessors, and important trends and events. Yet as soon as such webs of power and dependency change, those views of history may change accordingly.

 

Yet in none of those cases attempts may be made to view history from a sufficient distance, as patterns that happened in the past leading to the present, taking into account all people involved, without attaching value judgments to them. Doing so is not easy, but it is possible. It first of all requires to take distance from one’s own value judgments and examine them as closely and carefully as possible, in an attempt to avoid projecting them onto one’s views of history.

 

How can that be done? I know no better way than to go and live within another society while abandoning one’s own language and culture as much as possible, with keeping one's eyes, ears, heart, smell, in fact all sensory input, as open as possible, while trying to understand what is going on in such societies ‘from within.’ Doing so will confront such a person with a large number of one’s own cultural perceptions, which may be modified as a result. I did so in Andean Peru in the 1980s and 1990s, and it profoundly changed all of that inside of me.

 

Yet analyzing such societies also requires distance, including employing a theoretical scheme. I used the central idea of Norbert Elias’s sociology: interdependent people, whose interdependencies can be seen as power balances. I avoided leaning too heavily on seeing his theory of civilizing processes as a more general approach to the history of humankind, because that did not always make enough sense to me, however valuable his original analysis may be.

 

Like all academic models of reality, Elias' theoretical approach remains a model with certain limitations, some of which were discussed in my Peru studies. Such limitations always exist across all the sciences. Yet his approach served me wonderfully well for painting historical landscapes of Andean Peru's recent and deeper past, while seemlessly connecting all of them with each other.

 

Today, almost 30 years later, I still feel no need to change any of that in my work on Peru. A further important test was whether the people in Andean Peru that I knew would also understand it. And to my delight they did, without any cultural frictions. This augured well for such an approach, or so it seemed to me then, and now.

 

While doing all of that, I was very much aware of the fact that people are always living within an ecological setting, in their case the Andean mountains, which I described in my work. Yet systematically including the history of that ecological setting was beyond my powers then, and even now, for lack of sufficient knowledge. Yet such an ecological history must have existed, and must be taken into account for a fuller understanding of human history everywhere on the globe.

 

While for reasons that still elude me I was not allowed an academic opportunity to continue my Peru research in the Netherlands after my Ph.D. graduation cum laude in 1992, even though my work offered the opportunity for a further rich intellectual harvest with general relevance within many academic fields. Since that time big history has provided the possibilities of doing so systematically.

 

I will not argue that it is always necessary to go back all the way to the big bang to understand Peruvian Andean societies. But it may be very helpful to keep in mind that they, and also we, live on one single interconnected globe that is roaming around the universe, on which all more complex life is very dependent for receiving a large portion of its energy, namely energetic sunlight, while getting rid of a similarly large portion of its entropy, disorder, in the form of less energetic electromagnetic radiation.

 

While trying to reconstruct histories large and small from such a larger perspective, it may be possible to avoid assigning the status of heroes, or villains, to certain people and their deeds from an academic analytical point of view. Instead we should seek to only describe what happened, including the deeds of those people, to the best of one’s possibilities from the perspective of webs of interdependent people. That is already difficult enough. And doing so may show earlier preconceptions that need to be avoided, or gaps in knowledge that need to be filled in.

 

Surely, the people involved themselves espoused a great many of such judgments, and still do today. That should be included in the analysis. And from a personal point of view one can sympathize with certain points of view while taking distance from others. But such judgments should not enter into the painting of the historical landscape.

 

Yet we all have our personal judgments, and those should not necessarily be hidden from view. From my personal point of view, humans should always respect other humans in every situation, while aiming for the best possible ways to live together humanely on this tiny and increasingly populated globe, of which many natural resources are dwindling.

 

But this has surely not always happened in the past. It is not occurring in the present either, while it seems unlikely to emerge entirely so in the future. Yet one may strive for it.

 

The big questions then become: how can we achieve that, and what to do with those people who do not sufficiently respect other people? I have no good answers yet to those questions.

 

Yet one should refrain from imposing such views onto one's reconstructions of what ‘really’ happened in past, because doing so would distort such an exercise.

 

To finish, again seen from my personal point of view, it would be desirable if more such detached views of history were systematically taught in schools all over the planet. It might help us to see and understand ourselves and our history better, how painful it may sometimes have been, while dealing with all value judgments involved in fresh ways. As a result, we as a species may perhaps come together as one single humanity like never before.

 

 

Postscript

 

June 20, 2020

 

So what to do with all those statues and customs that other people find offensive for good reasons?

 

My suggestion would be that every country on our planet would abolish them and start instead a 'Museum of Uncomfortable History' where all those artefacts would be exhibited, both a real museum and an accompanying website.

 

In both cases there should be ample room to explain the histories of those statues and customs as objectively as possible, taking into account as many viewpoints as possible, while placing all of that within a wider historical perspective. All of this should happen with the greatest possible respect to all people involved.

 

Like all our perceptions of history, in all likelihood such an initiative would lead to further continuous discussions about how to interpret all of that.

 

And what would be good reasons to get rid of such public displays other than by placing them in the suggested museums? My criterion would be: If you have a problem with any of them, just try to put yourself into the shoes of the people who feel offended, and try to understand how that would make you feel. If you felt a similar anger, that would be a good reason.