# Who creates history?



## silverpixie

Were the most significant events in history made by the famous few, but not by the groups of ordinary people? Is this a mentalism view?


----------



## TRG

I don't think there is a simple answer to your question. There is a well known and similar question that goes something like, "Do the times make the man, or does the man make the times?" Would we remember Winston Churchill if not for WWII? I think that extraordinary times brings out the best, or maybe the worst in people. In any case, it is a chance for those with great leadership abilities to come to the fore.

I was considering starting a similar thread the past few days on the subject of history. I heard a book review by an author and historian named Michael Oren. The subject matter of the book is not so important, but it made me think about what the most relevant history is. Is it what actually happened, or is it what people most generally believe happened. The history we think of is often not what really happened and I believe the public forms opinions about current events based on false notions about the past. I'm sure someone can expand on this.


----------



## silverpixie

TRG said:


> I don't think there is a simple answer to your question. There is a well known and similar question that goes something like, "Do the times make the man, or does the man make the times?" Would we remember Winston Churchill if not for WWII? I think that extraordinary times brings out the best, or maybe the worst in people. In any case, it is a chance for those with great leadership abilities to come to the fore.
> 
> I was considering starting a similar thread the past few days on the subject of history. I heard a book review by an author and historian named Michael Oren. The subject matter of the book is not so important, but it made me think about what the most relevant history is. Is it what actually happened, or is it what people most generally believe happened. The history we think of is often not what really happened and I believe the public forms opinions about current events based on false notions about the past. I'm sure someone can expand on this.


 
I once saw some critics about historians---"historians are storytellers". I think to some extent it is true. What is written in our history text books is what is to serve our regime in power. The government tends to make the people believe in and convinced with the government's most important beliefs and values. But the government won't let us know their mistakes or something not so glory, so they tend to hide those things and show us only honorable and respectable history. Something like how a courty struggled against its enemy and win the liberation for its people, but neglect the history of aggressing in other countries itself. So I think that what see is an angle of history, it might be true, but unilateral.


----------



## .   1

History is written by the victors to make the victors appear to be human and the vanquished less so.

.,,


----------



## ernest_

Interesting. There is a fine song (actually a poem) “Palabras para Julia” (Words to Julia), that says:

A lone man, a woman,
taken one by one,
are like dust,
are nothing.

In my opinion it is pretty true. Human beings are social beings, we need others and without them we are nothing. Some individuals may have had a crucial impact on the course of history, but perhaps not much.  Would communism ever happened without Marx? Well, probably yes.  There were a lot of socialist thinkers before Marx, such as Proudhon, Robert Owen or Charles Fourier. Also, the material circumstances were there, it wasn't like Marx created them. What about Hitler? Many think he was a madman who plunged his country into the abyss, but not really.  Nazism can be easily understood given the historical context in which it appeared, that is, a nation humiliated in the World War I and facing serious economic trouble. If not Hitler, some other radge would have occupied his place. So, in conclusion, may be yes or maybe not. It is very hard to say. But, generally speaking, I think not. Of course, there are always exceptions.


----------



## dtcarney

"He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future." George Orwell


----------



## TRG

ernest_ said:


> Interesting. There is a fine song (actually a poem) “Palabras para Julia” (Words to Julia), that says:
> 
> A lone man, a woman,
> taken one by one,
> are like dust,
> are nothing.
> 
> In my opinion it is pretty true. Human beings are social beings, we need others and without them we are nothing. Some individuals may have had a crucial impact on the course of history, but perhaps not much. Would communism ever happened without Marx? Well, probably yes. There were a lot of socialist thinkers before Marx, such as Proudhon, Robert Owen or Charles Fourier. Also, the material circumstances were there, it wasn't like Marx created them. What about Hitler? Many think he was a madman who plunged his country into the abyss, but not really. Nazism can be easily understood given the historical context in which it appeared, that is, a nation humiliated in the World War I and facing serious economic trouble. If not Hitler, some other radge would have occupied his place. So, in conclusion, may be yes or maybe not. It is very hard to say. But, generally speaking, I think not. Of course, there are always exceptions.


 
I think it is true that many of the most important events of history and most scientific discoveries would have happened more or less the same way, but you never really know. What I do know is that within an organization, say a business, having a key person in the right place at the right time can make all the difference. Individual effort and creativity does matter, but we can't say just how that would alter the course of history. Whenever I ponder the abortion question (I'm not pro or con), I have to wonder how many truly remarkable human lives have been flushed away with the millions of ordinary ones that are so interrupted, and what will be the effect on human history?


----------



## zebedee

TRG said:


> Whenever I ponder the abortion question (I'm not pro or con), I have to wonder how many truly remarkable human lives have been flushed away with the millions of ordinary ones that are so interrupted, and what will be the effect on human history?



*MOD NOTE:

The abortion question is not the topic of this thread.

There are other threads open on the thorny topic of abortion. This is not one of them.

Any answers following this line of thought will be removed from here and placed in a more pertinent thread.

Thank you for your cooperation.*


----------



## agliagli

. said:


> History is written by the victors to make the victors appear to be human and the vanquished less so.
> .,,


 
And this is probably the reason why it continuously needs to be re-written...


----------



## John-Paul

We are creating history right now. This very message is stored and logged and might be viewed by a Historian in 2107. It's worrysome if you think about how much material there will be in a hundred years. If scientists write whole books on a few bones, imagine what they'll write if they have the documented life histories of millions of people available. Maybe you should ask: can we help history by videotaping less and deleting more?


----------



## .   1

Perhaps if we leave more accurate information there will be less rubbish written about history.
I do not see how history could be made more accurate by the deletion of stored information.

.,,


----------



## GEmatt

. said:


> History is written by the victors to make the victors appear to be human and the vanquished less so.
> 
> .,,


I was thinking much the same thing, and much less eloquently.
GEmatt


----------



## Lusitania

People, especially the stronger ones. History is the part of reality that a group of people decided to accepted has the truth of what went on.


----------



## Poetic Device

. said:


> History is written by the victors to make the victors appear to be human and the vanquished less so.
> 
> .,,


  Yes, I concurr.  I also think this is part of why history repeats itself.


----------



## agliagli

Poetic Device said:


> Yes, I concurr.  I also think this is part of why history repeats itself.


I know absolutely not whether history "repeats" itself, "rises" or "falls"...  This is not history that "repeats" itself... it is individuals who commit the same mistakes.


----------



## Poetic Device

That's the whole meaning of the phrase.  We don't learn from history for one reason or another so we doom ourselves to repeat itself.  "History repeats itself."  Like I said before, I brought this up because I believe the thought/idea/what have you that history books are written by the victors plays into the cause of that.


----------



## John-Paul

May be I should explain. I sais we are creating history - literally, be sending email, storing video and photos, by making scrapbooks, blogs etc. Historians nowadays are working with very limited resources when it comes to describing our past. For instance, we don't know very much about the life of the Roman slaves (the could read not write), but we do know much more about the literate upper classes. The world we live in now produces so much information that I am afraid a historian in the future doesn't know what to do with all that. Think about how many billions of photo and video files will be available in a hundred years. How do you think a historian is supposed to make sense of all that information. I'm not suggesting we should make a selection, not unlike a time-capsule, but I do think we should think about how our time will be perceived in the future, because, as I said, this already is history.


----------



## agliagli

Historiography helps in sorting out these things. And what I find amazing is that they keep arguing all the time!  Therefore, there is not just "one" history, but "histories"... And if I remember well, 18th century English fiction writers also called their works "histories"... (just amazing)

中国古代时把历史和文学一样分得不清楚
De la même manière, en Chine ancienne, l'histoire et la littérature ne connaissaient pas de disctinctions bien claires.
中國古代時把歷史和文學一樣分得不清楚


----------



## Amandla

the winners are the people who write the history, of course!


----------



## ernest_

. said:


> Perhaps if we leave more accurate information there will be less rubbish written about history.
> I do not see how history could be made more accurate by the deletion of stored information.




It's not hard to see, mate. Information may be true or untrue.  Since information that is bogus is inaccurate by definition, deleting such information would make written history more accurate.

Imagine when I die, if I write onto my grave “Here lies the King of the Kings“ or something like that. Some thousend years later, somebody will probably find my grave and they are very likely to think that some amazingly important gadge is buried in there, instead of the ordinary man that I am. They will probably spend a couple of decades theorising, trying to figure out who I was. So I reckon that misinformation (a great portion of what we are publishing nowadays) could be extremely annoying to the historians of the future.


----------



## agliagli

I am sure next generation historians can manadge to find out you were a liar... since present historians are able to do so by tracking sources. If you did that, there would be thousands of other information on you to deny you were a king, among which certificate would be the first(certificat de décès; sorry if it is not the word). I doubt any historians could be fooled in this case (without mentioning anachronism, etc. : they are no more kings in your area). But this would interest probably another kind of historians: sociologists...  I am not an historian to answer the question of sources, and the interpretation of facts, but I think a history book is not very different from a fiction...


----------



## Bonjules

Hola,

The history that actually happens/happened is created
by pepole (individuals/groups/ nations) following the dictates of their genetic predisposition, experience and their rationalizing of what seems to be a 'good idea' at the time (percieved need and 'obsessions').
The History we come to be told and most of us believe is, as  .,,  and Amandla have pointed out, written by
the 'victors' (and those with the better PR machinery, if I may add). Historians and writers, by and large, fall in line; they are no greater heroes than the average Joe Blow and 'know' very well what is expected from them(not necessarily a conscious process). 
So, History as we know it, is largely an artefact that lets
us sleep quietly at night - would anybody have expected something different?


----------



## .   1

agliagli said:


> I am sure next generation historians can manadge to find out you were a liar... since present historians are able to do so by tracking sources.


This would be even more revealing for future historians as it is always possible to glean more information from a lie than form the truth.

.,,


----------



## maxiogee

silverpixie said:


> Were the most significant events in history made by the famous few, but not by the groups of ordinary people? Is this a mentalism view?



By the many, led by the few.
Napoleon Bonaparte was only an Emperor because he led an army of many.
Mao Zedung needed to have 100,000 "followers" or he wouldn't have had a "Long March".

Even Christianity (perhaps the most significant 'one-man' event in Western history, and possibly the world's history) only spread because people took the word to others.


----------

