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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2830 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: June 21, 2017

No.

I will be forgotten. You will be forgotten, we will all be forgotten (mk, thenewgreen and b_b I'm not so sure). We are "a part of history" the way a drop of water is part of a rainstorm. It's the lightning bolts that crack the trees we learn about.

The Durants make the point that nearly everyone who ever walked the earth was just getting by trying to lead a normal happy life and that the periods we don't learn a lot about are generally the happiest. But what we learn about? We learn about the tragedies and their architects. History is change and change is almost always cataclysmic for someone.

Usually lots of someones.

Who have already been forgotten by history.





mk  ·  2830 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'll be forgotten, and I don't much care how long it takes.

I recently read the Meditations, and about 50% of it is Aurelius reminding himself that he will be forgotten, and that postmortem remembrance is a pretty stupid thing to waste the present on.

    History is change and change is almost always cataclysmic for someone.

He pretty much says that too.

kleinbl00  ·  2830 days ago  ·  link  ·  

No one ever called Marcus Aurelius dumb.

user-inactivated  ·  2830 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    But what we learn about? We learn about the tragedies and their architects.

The world is a terrible, grim and painful place if all you choose to look at is suffering.

OftenBen  ·  2830 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    The world is a terrible, grim and painful place if all you choose to look at is suffering.

Historians talk about this problem a lot, if you look into it. The history of families mostly-peacefully raising children who do the same-ish things as their parents isn't recorded in a lot of places. If you want 'positive' history, you need to study individual families.

Personal example, I have a pretty detailed genealogy/family tree that goes back to Sweden in the late 1400's. What we know about the people who lived back then, and in all the years inbetween 1480 and now, is very little. We know they lived, had X number of children, of whom Y survived to adulthood. Sometimes we know what they did for a living for a large portion of their lives.

When we're studying 'history' we are most often studying the short, painful periods of drastic change between one paradigm and another paradigm. The Dramatis Personae of history are almost all right and proper bastards because you have to be a right and proper bastard to start and/or end a war.

Contented, peaceful, happy people do not dramatic change make.

kleinbl00  ·  2830 days ago  ·  link  ·  

There are a few examples within the Durants' books where they say "King X was, by all accounts, a kind and generous man who presided over forty years of prosperity. We wish we could say more about him but the record of his accomplishments and failures is predictably spare, as with most great men who fought no wars. Fortunately for us, and unfortunate for the world, his throne was inherited by Y the Terrible, who will be the subject of the next several chapters."