I don't want to bury the quotes in the postings that have influenced my thinking. It's time to address some more profound items.* I must sustain the reader's interest, though I assume few are paying much attention. Capturing and sustaining anyone's interest is difficult. It's like being single again.
But here is a quote that altered my perspective forever.
"God cannot alter the past, though historians can." - Samuel Butler.
This statement shocked me. From it, I drew two inalterable conclusions. First, there IS truth. It can be unpopular to claim that. I find it inescapable to acknowledge that there is a binary essence in our collective experience throughout time. A specific event did or did not happen. A person was involved in that activity, or they were not.
I call that "God" history. An event either did or did not take place. Even God can't alter it. Binary. I can claim that alone, Oswald shot President Kennedy from the Texas Book Depository in Dallas. He did, or he did not. Or, bodies of aliens were removed by humans from a crash site in Roswell, NM, in 1947, or they were not. Maybe we will never know the answers with uncontestable accuracy, but either way, even God can't alter what happened. It did (or didn't) happen in a singular, unimpeachable, binary fashion.
This brings us to the second conclusion, best expressed by H. L. Mencken. "Historians are failed novelists."
Thus,
"Nothing is easier than to falsify the past…. Your real and proper object, after all, is not to expound, but to realize it, consort with it, and make your spirit kin with it, so that you may never shake the sense of obligation off." – Woodrow Wilson 1918
We try to make sense and attach meaning to what we do, to what others do, and to experience. We create story. Through story, humans can and do alter the past.
To be accurate, we can't help ourselves. If we attempt to communicate events in ways that make sense, bias is an unavoidable impediment. Bias is present from the very beginning, influencing our subject selection, our focus, our epistemology, our interpretation, and ultimately, how we'll heed the inclinations of the intended audience.
Embellishments, excuses, justifications, viewpoints, scope, proof, context, memory, distortion, and even damned lies are a paltry few of the components of a long list of pitfalls encountered as we describe a past event. It is impossible to eliminate every one of the hazards when we communicate History, though the best and most talented try.
Butler made me think about my thinking surrounding History. Can we distinguish binary from narrative History? Can History uncover facts, or is all interpretation of human interaction subject to whim and subjectivity? If I could teach high school history now, I would begin by developing an appreciation for the differences between binary events and historical interpretation.
And with this in mind, History becomes fascinating.
* There has been a time lag in publishing Blog #5 because you are reading the 21st draft. Butler's quote is a compact assertion that touches upon deep and controversial issues in Philosophy, Methodology, Epistemology, Linguistics, Politics, and now AI. There is so much more to say, and I've left myself open to misunderstanding and legitimate critique. But, I do believe there is a basis for some aspects of "Truth," which can lead to enlightened understanding, and I fear that the future of certain technologies might/will blur any ability to achieve that. Humans get in their own way.
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