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--- history [2024/01/12 11:13] – ultracomfy
+++ history [2025/04/09 20:12] (current) – ultracomfy
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+~~Title:History~~
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+{{page>Templates:Secularization}}
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-<fs xx-large>History</fs> refers to the past or at least the study of the past. While perhaps interesting to those with an innate interest in how the modern day came to be, it is not particularly interesting when establishing a consensus on how the modern day //should// be. There seem to be a few misconceptions about history that I will try to get straight here.\\
+<fs xx-large>History</fs> refers to the past or at least the study of the past. While perhaps interesting to those with an innate interest in how the modern day came to be, it is not particularly interesting when establishing a consensus on how the modern day //should// be. When reading this page, keep in mind that this is my primary interest: Finding out what is best for humanity, then finding a way to get there. Everything else is irrelevant.((Irrelevant **to me**, anyway. I am not saying that someone else may feel different about it.))\\
+{{page>Templates:Factuality}}
 ====== Meaning of History to me ======
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 The Mayans spent their time pulling strings of thorns through people's tongues(([[CGP Grey]], in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcc_KAhwpa0&t=35s|2012 Didn't Happen]])), I'm sure learning about how to appease the holy Coyopa((Name of god chosen at random. I originally chose Vishnu but worried this may lead to outcry because Vishnu isn't Mayan, and that because of this narrative inconsistency, the entire point of history not telling us much new would become invalid.)) to prevent divine intervention by orbital obliberation will prove mighty useful to you one day.
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-Being a [[Humanism|humanist]], I care about human lives. I care about quality of life, health, access to education, equality before the law, the fight against discrimination of all kinds, I care about families, friendships, couples and marriages, the good times and the hardships we persevered through... I care about humans and that they get as good a life as they can possibly have. This means abandoning all preconceptions about what is considered "good" or "bad", it means that nothing is holy or safe from scrutiny, but it also means that I am focused on the present. The past is history and done and dealt with. What matters is the situation we have at hand right now - what actions we can take to improve the life of //everyone, today//. For example, the tragedy that unfolded in World War 2 is terrible - humans were hurt, families severed, hopes and dreams crushed. This //is// terrible and I //do// care about it in THAT sense. However, beyond the humanistic perspective of "this was terrible and my deepest condolences", this is //not// relevant to me. Everyone today deserves the best life they can possibly have, what does knowing about WW2 change about this? I will say it: I don't care about World War 2. Or perhaps a bit more recent: I don't care about Israel and Palestine. I don't care about Russia and Ukraine. I care about the fact that guns are being used to hurt and kill, to sever, cripple and tear apart, affecting humans //right now//. I don't care what the IDF has to say or what Hamas wants, just fucking put your guns down. Who cares about WW2 now? We have problems at our hand //right now// and I don't need no history to know right from wrong. If you want to be able to point at things and go "yes, humans have made this mistake before" then go ahead and learn about history, I hope someone else will actually //do// something about the problem instead.
+Being a [[Humanism|humanist]], I care about human lives. I care about quality of life, health, access to education, equality before the law, the fight against discrimination of all kinds, I care about families, friendships, couples and marriages, the good times and the hardships we persevered through... I care about humans and that they get as good a life as they can possibly have. This means abandoning all preconceptions about what is considered "good" or "bad", it means that nothing is holy or safe from scrutiny, but it also means that I am focused on the present. The past is history and done and dealt with. What matters is the situation we have at hand right now - what actions we can take to improve the life of //everyone, today//. For example, the tragedy that unfolded in World War 2 is terrible - humans were hurt, families severed, hopes and dreams crushed. This //is// terrible and I //do// care about it in THAT sense. However, beyond the humanistic perspective of "this was terrible and my deepest condolences", this is //not// relevant to me. Everyone today deserves the best life they can possibly have, what does knowing about WW2 change about this? It may sound aggressive at first, but it will make sense later: I don't care about World War 2. I don't care about Israel and Palestine. I don't care about Russia and Ukraine. I care about the fact that guns are being used to hurt and kill, to sever, cripple and tear apart, affecting humans //right now//. I don't care what the IDF has to say or what Hamas wants((No politically motivated ulterior motive justifies an invasion if both sides could live perfectly peacefully just by leaving each other alone.)), just put your guns down. Who cares about WW2 now? We have problems at our hand //right now// and I don't need no history to know right from wrong.
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 "We need history to not repeat our mistakes." cry the critics. Yes, if only the people in 1933 had some history to draw from to make their decisions, because then [[World War 2]] would never have happened. If we had tales of a previous, intelligent civilization on earth going extinct due to [[climate change]], would that suddenly make people care about it?((If yes then why does it take someone else to make a mistake before we before you can stop making that same mistake ourselves? If not, then apparently we are **not** learning from history.)) No matter what you answer, yes or no, it shines light on some very fundamental flaws in society which are //not// addressed by learning about history.\\
+The irony is that we do in fact have tales of changing climates leading to the downfall of civilizations. The Mayan decline was through ecological, climate factors.\\
+\\
 Just keep in mind that, yes, [[antisemitism]] has already happened. Homophobia has already happened. Slavery has already happened. War and terror are deeply rooted in human history. The modern times revival of these old things in addition to the current rise of antisemitism (the 2023 Israel war on Gaza is happening as I am writing this), the LGBTQIA+ moral panic triggered by conservative pundits etc., history has little to say about these things that I couldn't already deduce from just the application of ethics. History may be able to give //context// and that is good, but in terms of "how much can I learn from history that allows me to make better decisions //today//?", history is, unfortunately, not the gold mine it is made out to be, and looking at the world out there, we are definitely //not// learning from it. Of course we're not.
-For example, the mistake of being politically inactive. Only ever casting a vote every four years so to get a say on who gets to take a turn is certainly not being 'politically active'. "The politicians are breaking their campaign promises", but nobody ever thinks about doing something about it. Political inaction of the people is what enables rampant corruption in rich countries like Germany. If corruption actually sufficiently affected re-election rates or caused massive protests and strikes, things would change very rapidly. It can't ever be fully eliminated, but it could be made politically insignificant. If climate change inaction lead to horrible re-election rates or mass strikes, we would be the first nation to fully transition to renewables. History shows us how this mistake was made time and time again, but nobody is learning. Where the hell is the learning!?? Nobody is not reapeating other people's mistakes. There's war, discrimination, bullying, inflated body images, marginalization, but certainly every individual thinks they're not part of it somehow. "I definitely do not marginalize people! I would know if I did, but because I am a good person (obviously) I know that I am not."((Just because someone is not marginalizing jews doesn't make them any better //today// than those who marginalized jews in //their// time, if they are marginalizing other people (not jews, but still marginalizing) in //our// time. Or just spread hate/spite in general, through whatever way possible.))
+For example, the mistake of being politically inactive. Only ever casting a vote every four years or so to get a say on who gets to take a turn is certainly not being 'politically active'. "The politicians are breaking their campaign promises", but nobody ever thinks about doing something about it. Political inaction of the people is what enables rampant corruption in rich countries like Germany. If corruption actually sufficiently affected re-election rates or caused massive protests and strikes, things would change very rapidly. It can't ever be fully eliminated, but it could be made politically insignificant. If climate change inaction lead to horrible re-election rates or mass strikes, we would be the first nation to fully transition to renewables. History shows us how this mistake was made time and time again, but nobody is learning. Where the hell is the learning!?? Nobody is not reapeating other people's mistakes. There's war, discrimination, bullying, inflated body images, marginalization, but certainly every individual thinks they're not part of it somehow. "I definitely do not marginalize people! I would know if I did, but because I am a good person (obviously) I know that I am not."((Just because someone is not marginalizing jews doesn't make them any better //today// than those who marginalized jews in //their// time, if they are marginalizing other people (not jews, but still marginalizing) in //our// time. Or just spread hate/spite in general, through whatever way possible.))
+===== But isn't everything history? =====
+Everything we see and smell and know and feel is part of a long, sliding scale of history that extends ever-forward in lockstep with time that moves ahead at the same pace itself. As such, every piece of information we know is based on history. When I say that war is bad, I rely on the experiences from the past where I have felt suffering, [[Utilitarianism|declare suffering as bad]]((Because it is an [[axiom]] in my moral framework.)), go on to claim that war has a lot of suffering and therefore that it is "bad" and should be avoided.((Of course, nothing is ever inherently "good" or "bad", but that's not the point here.)) Every conception of ideas that I ever had relies on it's own little "history", just like scientific discovery is always a history in of itself.
+However, this is not what I mean when I say "history". Scientific discoveries may have historic //context//, but they stand on their own without it. Gold doesn't react with oxygen, which makes it useful for applications where rust would present major problems. This is a fact, and other facts may have been established in the past. I may care about individual facts that were established in the past, but I do not care about //how they came to be//, ie. the "history" part of that discovery. I don't know how and why this chemical property of gold was discovered, and I don't know what other elements scientists or alchemists have looked at. Irrelevant. If I need something that doesn't rust **and** isn't gold then I can consult previously established facts or do some scientific inquiry to find that out, but this still does not necessitate "history". **Just because a fact was established in the past (like "water melts or freezes at 0°C") doesn't make it history.** If you still think it does, then it's probably a [[Words]] issue.
 ====== Modern day context of History ======
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-<WRAP centeralign>~Winston Churchill</WRAP>
+<WRAP centeralign>~Winston Churchill, though it's not to be taken literally. There is more to history (a lot more) and history doesn't stop after the victors.</WRAP>
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 ====== Historical Context ======
+//See the full page on [[Secularization]].//\\
 There is one aspect of history that I like in particular, and it has to do with "learning how things in the present came to be": Putting things into historical context. For example, the modern day wave of discrimination against [[transgender]] is just one step in a centuries-long fight against discrimination of **all** kind. The only thing that changed is the exact position of the [[Overton Window]], but not its implications. These days it's mostly against Transgender, Homosexuality and Mental Illness((And let's not forget scientists, climate activists, vegans (or at least vegan food-alternatives), foreigners, the poor, the unemployed, the young and so many more...)), back then it was black people, even more homosexuals, jews and women((Not to say that any of these problems are no longer problems nowadays, I am just saying that the bulk of discrimination used to focus on different things at different points in time.)), before that it was slaves, then before that <del>unbelievers of Christianity</del> heretics, witches, still more jews; the Romans used to discriminate against Christians when //that// started to pick up steam(([[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Roman_Empire|Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire]], from Wikipedia. It was only local and sporadic, but it's one of the easier things to find. Point is that the Romans too had things to discriminate against, including slaves.)). In contrast, //they// didn't even //think// of discriminating people for their color.
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 Posit me one piece of information that meets the following criteria:\\
 ) It must "be history".\\
-) It must be necessary to make good decisions about modern day problems.\\
+) It must be **necessary** to make good decisions about modern day problems.\\
-) It must not be information directly related to the modern day.((I mean that I accept //some// parts of history as useful, in that they are directly related to the modern day. For example, some words or graphics may have historic connotations that aren't directly reconstructible just by looking at them, hiding in themselves meaning that is historic //in nature// (read: the swastika, "From the river to the sea", etc.). If these symbols are used today, then at least one should know history at least well enough to understand what they mean, whether they are an expression of hate or similar things.))((And //yes//, I //know// that the Nazis stole the swastika from someone else.))\\
+) It must not be information directly related to the modern day.((I mean that I accept //some// parts of history as useful, in that they are directly related to the modern day. For example, some words or graphics may have historic connotations that aren't directly reconstructible just by looking at them, hiding in themselves meaning that is historic //in nature// (read: the swastika, "From the river to the sea", etc). If these symbols are used today, then one should at least know history well enough to understand what they mean (whether they are an expression of hate or similar things).))((And //yes//, I //know// that the Nazis stole the swastika from someone else.))\\
-) It must be a piece of information that cannot be deduced just from modern philosophy and looking at the modern day.
+) It must be a piece of information that **cannot** be deduced just from modern philosophy and looking at the modern day.
+----
+Essentially, the //spirit// of this challenge is that you close your eyes to find your inner balance, think of a historic event you are knowledgeable about and tell me one useful conclusion from it that I couldn't know without history.((Again, this excludes things that are directly related to the present - swastikas are used in the modern day, so knowing their meaning is essential.))\\
+**I claim that you cannot find such a piece of insight - and I say that**, except in special cases like mentioned in 3), **all information required to navigate the modern day can be deduced from looking at the modern day, making history redundant.**
+March 15 marks the day of Caesar's assassination. What is it about the assassination of Caesar that makes history important? Is the fact that some emperor on -44/03/15 got fragged going to be useful factual knowledge to me one day? Is it the overarching message, that Caesar pushed his political luck a bit too far and that playing the game of political power creates problems? And if so, why would I be unable to know this just by thinking rationally?