Historical Truth

Monday January 23, 2012

      Today's topics were simultancity and historical truth.  Simultancity is the interdependence of events, like when two things happen at the same time, but in different places.  Simultaneous inventions are a key indicator that people around the world think quite similar.  For example, when looking at the history of England, France, and the United States, all countries claim that they created the first motion pictures!  It is quite difficult to tell who actually did create the first movies because they all were created so close together.  Other inventions include the telephone and electricity.  Simultaneous inventions can be beneficial to countries because they can form alliances based on their common interests.  Simultaneous inventions can sometimes lead to trouble, however.  This article describes how when two people create the same thing, only the person who gets the patent is able to continue to use the invention:  patents on inventions.  Other people, such as Bill Gates, have even admitted to simply sitting around with friends just to think up ideas: Bill Gates & Friends.  The world just recently reached the 7 billion people mark, but simultaneous inventions have been happening for hundreds of years and will surely continue to become more frequent.

     Another topic from today was historical truth.  Historical truth is a genuine existence, or, a fact that no one doubts.  Typically only dates of events fall into this category because anything more than pure fact can be considered an onion.  A historical fact has 5 parts:  actors, action, places, times, and sources.  An example of this would be:  'The American Army defeated the British Army at the Battle of Saratoga on October 17, 1777 under General John Burgoyne."  All parts of that sentence can be verified by using historical documents.  A sentence such as: "The American Army defeated the British Army at the Battle of Saratoga because the American Army was better than the British" is not a good example because it leaves out key facts and uses an opinion, but nothing to back that opinion up.
Historical truth also means that there are two sides to every story.  For example, when looking at the Civil War, both sides (north and south) believed that they were fighting to defend their own ideas, beliefs, and country.  It is difficult to decide who was "right" in their way of thinking. 

      Historical truth also deals with actual history versus memory.  As stated before, historical truth contains pure facts, memories, on the other hand, can be incorrect on so many different levels.  Memories can be easily influenced, exaggerated, and distorted.  An example would be the terrorist attack on September 11th.  That was the major event our my generation (much like the assassination of JFK was for my mother and Pearl Harbor was for my grandmother).  After these major events people often like to talk about what they were doing when the event happened.  So when describing your experience are you going to say "I slept through 9/11 and my parents told me about it later"?? NO! This was the major event of your time! You are going to make sometime up to sound more interesting such as:  "My parents pulled me out of school, we watched the news for hours, and later we volunteered at a soup kitchen" (or something alone those lines).  Memories can also be distorted due to the media and what other people tell you.  This can often be called the public memory.  The public memory is what the majority of people usually believe, but not always.  So when the news is on and the reporter says "China felt grieve-stricken" take it with a grain of salt.  Yes, something bad probably happened in China and people are sad, but not everyone falls into that category.  So, from this analysis, one can conclude that there is not always a connection between historical truth and memory because memories can be so easily manipulated.

     The same conclusion can be draw from researching the Civil War.  Many historians hardest job is to not look at history through they eyes of today's standards.  They must consciously place themselves in the time period that they are studying.  We can't look back at history and say that Lincoln only wanted the Civil War to happen because he wanted to end slavery once and for-all because slavery is immoral.  When looked at through Lincoln's time, he actually was not entirely in favor of slavery, but he wanted to end it because he knew that the North would never win the war unless they used African American troops.  So, when looking at documents when people describe why Lincoln was a good president, one must remember that they are reading someone's memories and opinions, not a fact.  And, yes, it is often difficult to tell the difference between the two and it takes a trained mind to be good at it. 

     So, as we discusssed in this class, it is easy to tell what someone's argument is, but it is more difficult to tell why a person was arguing this and their particular views on a subject.  Sticking with the Lincoln ending slavery example, it is a known fact that Lincoln ended slavery, but the reason why he did it can be a different story.  Did he end slavery because it was immoral, because he needed troops, or for some other reason?  A person must be able to look at history through the eyes of the time, be able to tell the difference between truth, opinion, and memory, and then draw an educated conclusion.  This process can take a long time to learn and master, but once you know how history will be all the more interesting and debatable.