Back to the Future
Welcome to CrowdSource, your weekly guided tour of the latest intellectual disputes, ideological disagreements, and national debates that piqued our interest (or inflamed our passions). This week: history and the future.
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History Buffs
Tucker Carlson’s controversial interview with a Nazi-apologist and revisionist Twitter historian, along with a second (!) presidential assassination attempt, has us thinking about history this morning.
Just what is history? Does it have to be written down to “count”? If so, what happens to history once books are replaced by podcasts and video?
Several recent essays explore these questions.
The End of History? Matthew Walther foresees the “disappearance” of history due to “the exigencies of modern academic publishing, declining levels of general culture among historians themselves … a positive hostility toward good writing among peer reviewers, above all the atrophying of readers’ own attention span. … Historiography is becoming stuck.”
A Great Fog. Peter Hitchens observes: “There has never been a time when the past has been such an unmapped mystery to the young and to the middle-aged. Hardly anyone now knows what she or he ought to know, ought to have read, ought to have seen. Around 1989, a great fog descended over the past, not just of human action, but of human thought.”
A Completely New Story. Justin Germain writes about previously-lost and recently-recovered ancient texts: “The corroborating evidence provided when a new text is discovered is a foundational building block in that process. And that is to say nothing of texts that tell us a completely new story from antiquity, one for which there are no contemporaries, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh.”
Backward-Looking. Alexander Manshel notices a trend: “A historical novel has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 12 out of the last 15 years, and historical fiction has made up 70 percent of all novels short-listed for these three major American prizes since the turn of the 21st century. Today, writers … are less interested in the way we live now than the way we were.”
The Angel of History
In 2024, our cultural moment is choking with the past. It’s an age of reboots, oldies, aging populations and gerontocracy. No wonder writers are sitting down to contemplate the meaning of history.
And yet, the return of great power conflict and the rise of new technologies suggest that the future is coming fast.
The Angel of History. Our situation is best summed up by the late German philosopher, Walter Benjamin:
This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. … But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.
From the Crowd
Gemma Mason, responding to our podcast with the philosopher Charles Taylor:
A small point, but, regarding the somewhat pessimistic comments about today's pop culture, towards the end, I find myself wanting to suggest some more recent work than Charles Taylor can supply, as pushback to the idea that modern pop culture doesn't contain deep art any more. I submit, as two examples out of many possibilities, Hozier’s “To Someone From A Warm Climate (Uiscefhuaraithe)” and Brandi Carlile’s “You and Me on the Rock.”
I don’t think it’s just the physical violence, though that certainly plays a role. I think it's purpose. In general terms, I think men need purpose. Whether that be a “higher” calling, i.e., law enforcement, clergy, military, firefighter, etc. Or the more "basic" purpose of doing right by your family and/or friends (or your quasi paramilitary terrorist org). In my experience sports can mostly scratch the violence “itch.” I personally taught my two boys (and try to live by myself) that violence is never an acceptable response to anything but violence. I believe men do, in fact, have a duty to be prepared to use violence when the situation demands it though. Violence in defense of those who are unable defend themselves is the duty of every man IMHO.
See you next week!
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I'm a bit confused. I read Mather Walther's essay on the end of history, and below it was an essay, "Forget the Founding Fathers." According to that writer, the motives and reasoning of the Founding Fathers is no longer relevant.
The facts of history can be difficult enough to determine and organize. The reasons for our history will be forever in dispute. But anyone who thinks we benefit from just making it up as we go along deserves a special place in political purgatory. Which, near as I can tell, is where we are right now.