China vs. Taiwan

[Kashluk]

About this whole British documentary about American knowing about Pearl Harbor. It doesn't make sense.
Was it put by the BBC? That's bizarre. Are you sure they weren't talking about some theories that some historians had about it? Did they portray it as fact or speculation?

All I can remember is that it was on Discovery Channel and it was portrayed as fact. And the dude reading the text had a British accent.

[S4ur0n27]

In between these accounts lies the truth. The same has to be done with information we receive in the present.

Unfortunately few people are wise enough to keep that in mind and they just spit out blind hating/loving BS.

Btw we have the same education problem here, in Quebec. The self-defeatist mentally of the teachers destroyed the last bits of nationalism and nobody remember the patriots, nobody cares anymore for our fight against the english, people don't care anymore about french. We are getting slowly assimilated by the American and Canadian culture. Now don't take this as an anti-american comment, it's just that I think it's important to remember our ancestors and what they did and what they fought for and to keep our identity which used to distinguish us as what we were.

Hanging here made me respect and understand the American patriotism, tho I do not fully agree with the USA.

Hopefully people here will awake and realise that.

[OnTheBounce]

Unfortunately, too much patriotism/nationalism rarely kills your country, but a self-defeatist mentality will.

You're right. It usually leads to other people suffering at that country's hands.

It kinda reminds me of something that happened with Alexander the Great. During his campaign he brought along two historians who would write about his conquests. One of them glorified everything he did, making him sound like Zeus himself. The other, a Roman, villified Alexander repeatedly, making him seem like Satan. In between these accounts lies the truth. The same has to be done with information we receive in the present.

I've never heard of that. Very interesting.

Another thing that really bothers me about History as its treated today is that a lot of people really have no idea of why they should even be studying it. (I've read reviews on amazon.com where someone complained that the author of a statistical summary of the Battle of Kursk didn't "develop the characters enough"...) While some people are quick to spout the platitude about "those who do not study history are doomed to repeat its mistakes", I'll go a step further than that: the main purpose is to open (one might even say "free") the mind of the student. It's harder to cram moral codes that are impossible to live by when you have a vast panoply of how people have actually lived since time immemorial at your finger tips. It's also easy to counteract the old lie that "this is the way things have always been". Unfortunately some people can't seem to get that through their heads. Instead they see it as a sort of ancestor worship. Sorry, Clio doesn't sing the praises of people you should be thankful of -- they didn't do it for your sake, trust me -- but she can show you how some of the alternatives to the present have worked out before.

[Aside] One of the problems w/historians in the Ancient world is that they were generally hired by one party or another to write that history. If he was hired by that person on or one his his descendents you get to read the bombastic version that at least apologizes for the mistakes made, or � and this was often the case � outright lies about what happened. (The Battle of Canae and who was in charge that day comes to mind...)

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[Kashluk]

Our history teacher keeps telling us that studying history is studying human nature and, in her opinion, it did it better than psychology.

[OnTheBounce]

Our history teacher keeps telling us that studying history is studying human nature and, in her opinion, it did it better than psychology.

I like your teacher's position, but it goes a bit further than that. It's not just about human nature, but of all the dynamics at work on both societies as well as individuals. So you should actually be looking at everything from Anthropology to Zoology, with stops in Economics, Geography, Pathology and dozens of other disciplines.

Basically, History is a discipline that ties together all of the other disciplines that people study. You name it, it figures into the equation.

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[Kashluk]

Well aren't economics, geography, pathology and all those dozens of other disciplines FROM human nature? They study the way of human acts in different areas, in which case - like you said - history ties all those together.

[atoga]

History is very good to know, but those people who keep saying dumb shit like 'history repeats itself olol' are taking history a bit too seriously. It does have a little bit of everything, but often its scope is fairly limited or antiquated, and, in the case of many people, horribly biased. Like all the other academic things you mentioned, they're very useful tools, but to confine yourself to them - use them as strict laws - is a common, and very stupid, misconception. Learn to innovate; these are guidelines, not boundaries.

[OnTheBounce]

Learn to innovate; these are guidelines, not boundaries.

You should read Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Another thing to check into is the old PBS series The Ascent of Man.

In the former, the author describes how science advances, with new paradigms replacing older ones, and -- perhaps most importantly -- why it happens. The latter is a nuclear physicist turned biologist -- he got a case of the ass that his research was being turned to advances in nuclear weapons -- explains by way of physics why all human knowledge is non-absolute. (No, you don't need a degree in physics to understand it, it was designed for an educated lay audience.)

What I don't understand is how you consistantly seem to think that I'm telling you to shoehorn yourself into something when in fact I'm telling you to do just the opposite. Expose yourself to as much as possible, open your mind, and thereby free yourself. I'd recommend professional psychiatric help, but the way things are going these days you'd just be drugged and stuck in a corner with a nice bib on to soak up the drool. I guess you're on your own, then.

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