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Why do we glorify horrible people from the distant past?
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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Asklemmy
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What do you mean "objectively studying history", what is objective about History? What you're studying is a narrative, that has been put together by experts, based of what remains from that past. There is nothing "objective" about History, it is an educated guess. Even written records are narratives told from the perspective and culture of the ancient writer.
This is to say that, the reason we don't judge historical figures through a modern lens is that to do so is to ignore history. It doesn't matter what your think about Alexander the Great, it matters what his contemporaries (both friends and enemies) had to say about him (objectively biased narratices). For another example think about what the Greeks wrote about the Persians during their many wars, and vice versa. They are conflicrive accounts. Both biased and political. So again, what history is correct, objective?
A lack of absolute certainty does not equate to a lack of objectivity. You're right that history is necessarily written by individuals who have biases. But it is also written by many individuals from different perspectives and correlated with a variety of other sources of knowledge, such as archeology, geology, etc.
They are conflicting on some things, but they also agree on many things. For instance, I'm sure we can agree that the Greeks and Persians existed, controlled large empires, fought wars against each other, etc. Historians are trained to analyze all of the documents available from all perspectives and arrive at the most objective conclusion that they can muster.
I strongly oppose the postmodern attitude that everything is subjective. It's good to remember the limits of our knowledge, but to completely discard an academic field such as history as entirely subjective is quite absurd.
If this is your definition of "objective", something you can say about the books in the Bible, sure bro I guess. To me objective means it can be empirically proven: 2+2=4. Earth is the third planet from the Sun. Water at sea level boils at 100c. Etc.
If you think the one of many competing, historical narratives that you or your culture chose are "objective truth", sure bro, that's how politics works.
Seriously? What a ridiculous, intellectually dishonest false equivalency. Why not respond to the remainder of my argument? Do you actually doubt whether the Ancient Greeks existed?
Pure empiricism is pure nonsense. Objective truths exist independently of individual minds, while subjective truths exist within minds.
History is composed of a series of events that physically occurred on Planet Earth within the past ~5k years, and were recorded in written form by human beings. Human beings were born, did certain things, wrote them down, and died. We can dig up their remains and verify many of the things they wrote via empirical, scientific methodologies. You can choose to doubt various interpretations of the facts, but your delusions cannot change the inherent reality that lies within.
Your choice to contest the validity of history is demonstrative of a profoundly irrational mindset, because you are rejecting verifiable information in favor of your own subjective assumptions. You would prefer that history not be objective, because you wish to believe your own subjective version of history as an emotional coping mechanism.
Lol. Cope.
Ok I didn't realize you were just a troll. Good luck with that.
Not OP, but this sounds exactly like what I'd call objective history. Non-objective history is when people simp, say, Alexander the Great as some sort of political-national hero and say we ought to be more like him, he was a genius, he brought glorious Western civilisation and so on. That typically comes with minimising the whole slave empire thing, aristocrat nepobaby thing, and any other unsavoury details there might be about him by modern standards.
Sometimes it doesn't even make sense, it's just someone important seeming who can't object to being misused. Conservative MLK is a a particularly irksome one I see a lot, given that his body is barely cold in historical terms, and there's a very direct line between modern conservatives and the guys that put up sprinklers on their lawn next to the March's route.