Historical awareness can deliver us from both crushing despair and sophomoric narcissism just by placing our own situation in the context of broader human experience.
Scholar Allan Bloom famously wrote, “Failure to read good books… strengthens our most fatal tendency—the belief that here and now is all there is.”[1] “Our most fatal tendency”… given the human penchant for self-destruction, this is quite a charge. Bloom says the most common self-destructive tendency of humanity is its lack of historical awareness and thinking all that matters is the current moment.
You can see this in the YOLO ethos: You only live once, so do whatever you can right now. Of course, some things excused by YOLO seem likely to lead to YODA: You’ll ordinarily die agonizingly. Surely, we see the effects of this around us as people live in the moment without any sense of preparing for the future, or any sense that awareness of the past is likely one of the most valuable things to help us prepare for the future.
This is why this is a fatal tendency. If we don’t think ahead or plan, we’re likely to waste or ruin our lives. Evidence of this is easy to find. A student having plenty of fun but failing to complete an assignment or to study for a test, failing, getting behind or dropping out. Ruined marriages, destroyed relationships, lost jobs, all kinds of instances where you find yourself unprepared when you could have and should have been prepared.
So, if this is a “fatal tendency”, how do we address it? How do we inoculate ourselves? Well, we could address this from several angles, but surely one key piece is developing a historical awareness. Yet our culture is gleeful in its ignorance in general, and ignorance of history in particular. As Gordon Campbell said, “We may live in a world with more knowledge, but it is populated by people with less knowledge.”[2] The easy go-to for this is the much-used line from the song, “Don’t know much about history.” The context of the song is a guy wooing a girl. The guy professes his ignorance of many things, but he knows that he loves her, and if she’d love him back, “What a wonderful world this would be.” I picture a young lady responding, “So, you’re telling me you’re an idiot.” OK, it’s a cute song, but for guys, a much better tack would be to state some things you do know. She probably is looking for a guy with some competence. So, men should list some things they do know and then say, “But none of these are as amazing as getting to know you!”
But apart from silly songs, lack of historical awareness is fatal because history provides context for life and thought.
We know how words can be taken out of context and construed to mean something completely opposite of what was intended. But how do we interpret broader ideas, movements, cultural shifts, or ideologies? How do we know if a new idea is good, or even if it is new? History, of course. Without an awareness of history last year’s discarded failures of ideas become this year’s latest great idea. Wait. That is exactly what is happening today. History provides the context for these ideas, helping us to understand them properly and to be aware of how they have been weighed in the past. As Harry Truman once quipped, the only new thing in this world is the history you don’t know.[3]
My point is that without historical awareness, we are particularly susceptible to error. In C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, the demon Screwtape, instructing his protégé in the art of deceiving humans, says, “Remember they know no history.”[4] The implication is that by lacking historical awareness these people are more easily duped. They are lacking a key tool which might protect them. “[T]o ignore history is to invite disaster.”[5]
Cicero said, “Not to know what happened before you were born, that is to be always a boy, to be forever a child.”[6] History can and should lead us to maturity, preparing us to be discerning. Of course, it does not answer all questions, but it gives us experience. Why rely only on the years we have ourselves? History gives us the opportunity to gain years of experience by delving into the human experience, which has been written down, giving us further opportunity to gain maturity.
C.S. Lewis makes similar point in one of my favorite quotations: “A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.”[7] Make no mistake: The “great cataract of nonsense” has not ceased to flow. We need voices from different places and eras to give us perspective, to keep us from being swept up into the latest fad, and to give us pause. In this way it will inoculate us.[8]
Yet, writing in the 1930’s, Sinclair Lewis referred to “the muddy slew of recollection which most Americans have in place of a clear pool of history.”[9] It doesn’t seem to me our collective, cultural awareness has improved.
We need historical awareness, personally, and we need it as a people.
Theologian Alister McGrath has stated, “The surest way to destroy a people is to erase the memory of their past.”[10] It is striking to see the disintegration of cultural cohesion around us and to see it paralleled by gleeful ignorance of our history. Thomas Jefferson said, “The most effectual means for preventing the move to tyranny is the teaching of history.” In the preamble to his “Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge” in 1778, Jefferson went on to say:
“Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.”[11]
Knowledge of history is a guardian of liberty and defender against tyranny
Not only can history guard us. It can also guide us. English historian and philosopher, R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943) said, “We study history in order to see more clearly into the situation in which we are called upon to act.”[12] Similarly Lord Bolingbroke, an 18th-century political philosopher, said “History is philosophy taught with examples.”[13] To plot a trajectory you need two points. We have the present, but also the problem of seeing only the present. We can’t access the future, so our only option for a second point on our trajectory is the past.
Thus, if we are going to provide any leadership, any thoughtful input as to where we are going and how we ought to respond to current issues, we need to know the past. What did people in the past do in similar situations? What were the future results of similar ideas, plans or deeds? Can we learn from the failures of the past?
To point one to specific area of application, popular historian David McCullough, said, “A sense of history is an antidote to self-pity and self-importance, of which there is much too much in our time.”[14] When all we really know is our own personal history, we will too easily think our problems are the worst ever known by man, that we are of all people most to be pitied. Thus, everyone should recognize our trouble and cater to us. Or our troubles are the greatest ever, and we give up. Or, else, our accomplishments are the greatest of all times, we’ve overcome more obstacles than anyone else, and we ought to be appropriately praised. Historical awareness can deliver us from both crushing despair and sophomoric narcissism just by placing our own situation in the context of broader human experience.
For example, I often hear people say that we currently live in the darkest moment of human history. You can hear this all around our churches, news outlets, and even from dear, devoted people. Have you noticed yet that we seem to be in a continuous state of crisis? Just my own personal history, living just more than half-a-century, allows me to see that this claim of being in the darkest moment of history keeps being made over and over. This at least calls for suspicion. Then, I challenge such people. “Really? Is this the worst possible time in history? Did you ever read of when the bubonic plague, the Black Death, wiped out a third of the population in Europe? And the Hundred Years War killed thousands more, so that according to some estimates France lost half its population. What about various times in human history where normal people, peasants, lived in constant threat of plunder and pillage with no power of their own to fend off oppressors?” There are many further examples, but these should suffice in shaming the whining out of most of us. Of course, we have problems, but some historical awareness can keep us out of the unhelpful, unprofitable pity parties, and even give us some ideas for moving forward.
Here’s another example: The idea that America is God’s chosen people today in parallel with what Israel was in the Old Testament. There are serious biblical problems with this idea, but here I will just deal with the historical issues.
Several years ago, I was having lunch with a very thoughtful church member. He was an engineer and read a good bit of theology. In our conversation he began to talk about the United States as God’s chosen nation. I was surprised and gently pushed back. There is no biblical evidence. We are blessed. I am grateful for that, and I particularly love my country. But we have no special status before God. He was a bit shocked, so I asked for evidence of his position. He pointed to God’s intervention in our War for Independence. The fog coming in to help George Washington’s army escape from New York was one example, among many. Now, I acknowledge the trickiness of providential readings of history, but in this conversation I just said, “Sure. I am comfortable with seeing God at work in the unfolding of American history. But why do you think that is limited to us? Are we so self-absorbed to think God never providentially intervened in anyone else’s history? What about the Dutch fight for independence from Spain, when Spanish troops had the Dutch surrounded, and all looked lost. Dutch power was in their navy, but there was no water access to this battle, so they tore down the dikes and hoped the wind would turn to drive the water in the right direction so their navy could intervene. They prayed, and sure enough the winds came, their ships moved, and they won. In some of their books this is seen as indication of God’s intervention.” I asked my friend if this was any less dramatic than his American examples, and he had to concede it was not. I asked if he had ever heard this story, and he had not. Historical awareness can deliver us from thinking only we have stories of great deliverance, which can help us avoid thinking we are more special than we are.
Examples could be multiplied. But if we lack historical awareness, we will lack discernment and direction. We will be easy prey for silly ideas. We will be all the more susceptible to the self-absorbed perspective that so dominates the air we breathe.
Rather than a nation of blissfully ignorant people, glorying in their shame, we need a new wave of thoughtful, hardworking, deep-thinking young people to bring to bear historical awareness to discover paths forward. Martin Luther once said, “Causing the history of their times to be written with care ought to be the work of great men.”[15] Maybe some of my present readers will be those great people who help preserve our history and persevere in light of it. In the words attributed to Alfred the Great, King of the Saxons, “The past is given to those in the present, to keep and guard those in the future.”
This essay originated as the address for the annual banquet of the Delta-Psi chapter of Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society at Union University, Jackson, TN, May 2, 2019. The author is grateful to Dr. Stephen Carls for the invitation.
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
[1] Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 64.
[2] Gordon Campbell, Bible: The Story of the King James Version, 1611-2011 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 55.
[3] Cited by David McCullough, “Knowing History and Knowing Who We Are,” https://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-4_18_05_DM.html
[4] C. S. Lewis, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast, in The Screwtape Letters (New York: Collier Books, 1982), 157.
[5] George Grant, The Blood of the Moon (Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1991), 11.
[6] Cicero, M. Tulli Ciceronis Ad M. Brutum Orator: A Revised Text (Cambridge: University Press, 1885), 125.
[7] C. S. Lewis, “Learning in War Time,” in the Weight of Glory: and Other Addresses (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), 58-59
[8] Another related Lewis quote: “The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.” (“On the Reading of Old Books,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology & Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970], 202).
[9] Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here (New York: Penguin, 1970), 113.
[10] Alister McGrath, Chosen Ones (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 119.
[11] Thomas Jefferson, “Preamble to a Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,” 1778.
[12] R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 114.
[13] Cited, though not identified, by David McCullough, The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017,) 57.
[14] The American Spirit, 57.
[15] Edwin M. Plass, ed., What Luther Says (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959), 648.
This essay originated as the address for the annual banquet of the Delta-Psi chapter of Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society at Union University, Jackson, TN, May 2, 2019. I am grateful to Dr. Stephen Carls for the invitation.
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
The featured image is “Portrait of a Woman with Turban: Clio, Muse of History” (circa 1800), attributed to Andreas Nesselthaler, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.