What is History to You?

[fooferdoggie]

Unfortunately foofie, you're tiggered again. He didn't specify "venerating" or the history of the south, or of whomever YOU consider to be traitors, you know. There are currently traitors running things and turning the agencies into political armies against political opponents. Currently censoring medical information in order to forward government programs. Ministries of Truth are popping up. Totally dystopian stuff, foofie, but it's the kind of censorship YOU like.
He correctly pointed to the removal of our own histories in favor of equally ugly stuff from other cultures or our own present very ugly culture of political censorship from the joining of big business and global political control by the fabulously wealthy.
People who rightly value freedom highly want YOUR insane thoughts to be freely available to air out the stench, even if it is supporting and training Nazi forces for Ukraine.
You detest sHitler but praise present-day nazis being trained and armed.

well of course since you don't know americas history. but most of what you say is like word salad and no clue where your going. its like shoving everything in a bag and shaking it up with some dressing.

 

[Handlebars]

well of course since you don't know americas history. but most of what you say is like word salad and no clue where your going. its like shoving everything in a bag and shaking it up with some dressing.

Well, foofie, I know where to place an apostrophe, so I'm two up on you, at least; "America's", not "americas", and "you're", not "your". You're (you are) at minimum, a figure of fun.
It's hardly a wonder that you find my writings to be a puzzle, since you are at a low grade school level...perhaps third grade, near the bottom of the class.

 

[fooferdoggie]

Well, foofie, I know where to place an apostrophe, so I'm two up on you, at least; "America's", not "americas", and "you're", not "your". You're (you are) at minimum, a figure of fun.

well you got me there. But still your giving Alex Jones a run for the money.

 

[Tars Tarkas]

or we need to stop venerating the traitors of the past. the South never let go of the past and tried to keep it alive. what id Germany had nazi lane hitler high school? even Lee said the flag should be burned it was a traitor's flag. keeping the traitors alive is not learning from the past its trying to keep the past alive.

This sounds about right. There is a difference between remembering and venerating or honoring the past. We (Americans) have made some shameful mistakes, even if not everyone understood our errors at the time. I think it's right to remember and even study those mistakes so we can hope to never repeat them. That can be done without erecting statues of the perpetrators. The past can be remembered even if those statues are torn down.

Some of our mistakes can never be made right and any human being should be ashamed of them. Victims were certainly victimized, and I don't mean to minimize that at all, but even the victims can be ashamed of what we, as homo sapiens, did.

We should own our history even if it doesn't always make us proud.

Sadly, ominously, we are still making grave mistakes.

TT

 

[kevinmccune]

Yes, no respect at all, not a thought for those of the past who left a legacy. What was their struggle and toil for.

We are better people when we hold a gratitude and a tip of the hat to those of the past. It grounds us. We are better people to remember those of the past with thanks in our hearts. It makes a sense of the present, all joined through time in a continuum.

You're right. Thanks for making that point.

When the rich people around here grab land, generally the first thing they do is change the name. I remember when my former well off employers won the bid for a nice piece of farmland adjacent to their properties thet had to change the name from"Whitegate Farm" to "Riverjack farm" one reason I remember that was because myself and others were working in the cold rain to help them get enough money to buy that nice farm,I fondly remember standing in a downpour with my broken back screaming in pain and in one hell of a depression, the soon to be company president( my age) cracked his window in His warm dry pickup and told me to put the handheld radio under my rain coat so it wouldn't ger wet. Such lovely People( they have a reputation) The company owner in those days advise one of my friends to "buy land they are not making anymore of it"( hard to do on low wages) later on about 5 years later I wanted to buy a couple acres from the company owner on the lower end of that farm,He laughed at Me.

 

[duggie]

Once again, yesterday, Thursday, like some obsessed Victorian scientist I found myself in an industrial museum, my mind connected with the ghosts of those of times gone. The museum was large, belonging to a large city, and me and the ball and chain saw not a soul throughout our whole time in there other than four staff at the entrance hall. The building was Victorian mill, the machines were so massive, sometimes, and the intricate ingenuity displayed was terrifying as well as astonishing. Clearly people, now dead, had poured their whole lives into these endeavours. In my mind was a clanging pendulum: was it worth their life? or should they have lived a life perched high aloft observing many lives, and varying one's life....a book of many and varied, shorter chapters; a book of many lifetimes?

Which way is the best way to spend one's life? If I go on holiday, say around Europe, here there and everywhere, a new camp every day, different countries, etc, then after only about two weeks when I sit with an evening's reflective beer, thinking back to home, is like looking the wrong way through binoculars; it seems like home was years ago! Time, my perception of time, has stretched when compared to 'home time'. So in those two weeks I got much more out of my time (my life), and this is what is niggling me. The routine of home seems to contract my time greatly, so that ten years can seem like a year.

 

[duggie]

I feel I have delved too far into this subject for my own good. I should leave it now. But the lesson, if there is one, for me, is to stick with that which is good. But other changes, embrace them, for there is a future, as uncertain as it seems at the time. It is better this than to cling to the known and familiar, in the end. Be free to experience life. I wish I could explain myself better. Just get as much as you can from each day, and that to me seems to mean NOT TOO MUCH OF THE SAME. Explore. Pioneer. But that which really matters keep up. We will die. It is best to live with this to get the most.

That museum was a bit too much, but best it was done. But, hey, GOOD LIVING

 

[kevinmccune]

Go your way, you know you are probably getting close to the "uncomfortable truth" when 90% disagree with you.

 

[PedalUma]

About 1/3 of this thread displays as ignored content. I am glad I don't have to read it. It is true the statues of the brutal oppressive traitors in the South were raised three generations later. It is not history, it is an attempt to rewrite history as if the loosers are honorable, venerable winners and that their looser ideas still hold sway and power. They do not. At least not in public.

 

[kevinmccune]

About 1/3 of this thread displays as ignored content. I am glad I don't have to read it. It is true the statues of the brutal oppressive traitors in the South were raised three generations later. It is not history, it is an attempt to rewrite history as if the loosers are honorable, venerable winners and that their looser ideas still hold sway and power. They do not. At least not in public.

Fork yes, there are those would take advantage of those who would live and let live.

 

[Mulezen]

The major historians of the 1880s (Southern) wrote the tune that many still dance…the war of Northern Aggression ie: the Civil War was not about slavery but State’s right. That’s the basement of so many of our problems today. History is of course more than dates and statues…”Think now/History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors/And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions/guides us by vanities”TS Elliot.
The history I’ve been reading recently on the prehistory of North America…1491 (Charles Mann) addresses the ‘New World’ with such estimates of population pre-Columbus of 100 million. The Aztecs maintained a city larger than any European and with running water and sewage. And the first chapter about early contact in Mass will confound ones early education.
Other kinds of history I find valuable are ones that look at the social, the individual such as Stud’s Terkel‘s work...fun little slices that knit into an honest whole. A particular favorite of mine is the remarkable All God’s Dangers by Theodore Rosengarten about the long life and times of an illiterate Black Alabama sharecropper. I passed this along to a recent French immigrant who wanted to understand America. And then perhaps he can explain to me why the French worship Jerry Lewis

 

[Slaphappygamer]

Stuff that happened before right now.


Or right now.


Or right now...

Reminds me of….

All seriousness, music is my history. When I hear a song, I can tell you if and when I most remember listening to it. Music, for me, is a timeline that I can visualize. I’ve played drums for ten years and playing bass for 20. I pick the layers of the song apart into their individual tracks. I sometimes like to sit quietly and listen to music. I don’t even need speakers. I remember songs. Close my eyes and escape to another time, in my history. I imagine this might be what it is like for people that enjoy other types of media such as books or movies. Video games also do this for me. I’ve been an avid gamer for decades.

 

[duggie]

About 1/3 of this thread displays as ignored content. I am glad I don't have to read it. It is true the statues of the brutal oppressive traitors in the South were raised three generations later. It is not history, it is an attempt to rewrite history as if the losers are honourable, venerable winners and that their looser ideas still hold sway and power. They do not. At least not in public.

Me, though, here, I am concerned with the history not of books but of time, the passing of time.

Of course'history' is re-written, etc, and why we don't buy it, but then we use our imagination and sense to look back to the truth. History, it is soooo weird, this whole thing, but here it is, real. We know it passes quick. We have to make the most of it, not let it pour through our fingers............how do we do that?

 

[duggie]

Reminds me of….

All seriousness, music is my history. When I hear a song, I can tell you if and when I most remember listening to it. Music, for me, is a timeline that I can visualize. I’ve played drums for ten years and playing bass for 20. I pick the layers of the song apart into their individual tracks. I sometimes like to sit quietly and listen to music. I don’t even need speakers. I remember songs. Close my eyes and escape to another time, in my history. I imagine this might be what it is like for people that enjoy other types of media such as books or movies. Video games also do this for me. I’ve been an avid gamer for decades.

Well, Spaceballs is something you have to get into, so i can't say from that, but it looked promising.

I was interested in your interest in drumming and bass. I am, too. I wish we were mates near and could exchange, etc. But I know what you mean. I am not musical, a musician at all, alas, but i do listen to the layers and lines as you do. Oh, where do i start. Well, Chic, of course, Bernard. Sooo many other greats. Drums, again, sooo many. Wel here's a great band, God bless recently deceased Christine, Fleetwood Mac. I thin here the drumming is very good. As to bass, well, take your pick.

It's just everywhere, music, great, tapping the blue jeans even, in the dental waiting room, hearing it in your head, the tap-tap, tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap. Like I say, I'm not a musician, but it is kinda getting there.

 

[duggie]

Reminds me of….

All seriousness, music is my history. When I hear a song, I can tell you if and when I most remember listening to it. Music, for me, is a timeline that I can visualize. I’ve played drums for ten years and playing bass for 20. I pick the layers of the song apart into their individual tracks. I sometimes like to sit quietly and listen to music. I don’t even need speakers. I remember songs. Close my eyes and escape to another time, in my history. I imagine this might be what it is like for people that enjoy other types of media such as books or movies. Video games also do this for me. I’ve been an avid gamer for decades.

Right now! And then, just now! I think I should start a new thread about how to spend a new life. Fortunately, thankfully, I have no regrets, well, I do, I wish I'd understood my sexuality earlier. I have managed enough by bumbling through to get enough, but would have liked more (basically I am attracted to thin women, stick thin. Face never seemed to matter too much....always attractive. I know what I like now.), but other than that, I think I have managed to get through to accept my eventual demise. No regrets....other than the sex missed.

 

[kevinmccune]

Right now! And then, just now! I think I should start a new thread about how to spend a new life. Fortunately, thankfully, I have no regrets, well, I do, I wish I'd understood my sexuality earlier. I have managed enough by bumbling through to get enough, but would have liked more (basically I am attracted to thin women, stick thin. Face never seemed to matter too much....always attractive. I know what I like now.), but other than that, I think I have managed to get through to accept my eventual demise. No regrets....other than the sex missed.

Heard that Lament more than once, perhaps its better if a young person gets it out of their system early( the sexual fantasies) and realizes the end game of sex, not to be venerated perhaps, so as to realize its necessity for the future of the species. This current generation is going down the same rabbit hole ancient Rome did. Some give it fifty years, some 20, 10 or less- it seems to me as a society we grow progressively weaker.

 

[PedalUma]

The same rabbit hole ancient Rome did

There is some real truth to that. One is gladiator sports. Another is seeking an Emperor. There are counter forces at play too.

 

[kevinmccune]

Not to resurrect the "dead thread", as of late with growing admiration for the likes of Eric Weinstein,Gary Nolan, Jordan Peterson( folks of that ilk) it seems we are literally on " the Highway to Hell" one crazy spasm from a demented dictator( lets hope their Sub Commanders have cooler heads) can put this "epoch of mankind" back past the stoneage in an unimaginable "fusion hell". Never before have this race of slightly evolved Chimps have had the power to remake the entire ecosystem of the only planet we know that can sustain Human life.
Forget"Arkoligies, colony ships or anything of that messanic nature blasting off at the last minute to a beautiful antipode like world on the other side of the galaxy, won't happen.We cannot even keep a bumbling space station in LEO going.
The time to act is now, we have a great talent for destruction, small talent for cooperation, don't know who destroyed the "Georgia Guidestones" must have been a scary message to the "power cabal', it may already be too late to restore the coastal ecosystems among others, perhaps just maybe if we can throw a little love and respect for others into the mix, maybe just maybe we can avoid the pending anarchy or brutal dictatorship that seems to be our destination. We have observed from watching rats and other animals what overpopulation and crowding can do, perhaps its time to bring a reasonable median into focus and not go on our ravening path towards destruction and unsustainable waste( go look at a landfill and tell me whats wrong with this picture, sit in a traffic jam, feel the love from all those individuals, stuck in their 4000#" quadricycle worm mashers" for hours on end.)
Methinks perhaps it is time for a reset, we thought the advent of the "microprocessor-PC,electronic revolution" would cut down on the "paper waste, time lost paradigm". In reality it seems to have changed very little, true there are now more wealthy that have acquired unimaginble wealth, at the other end of the scale there are an ever increasing amount of Homeless People who see no end to their plight( their bootstraps severed before they can rise) How many more "Katrinas' will it take, how many Desert blizzards and freezes before we realize that perhaps"Ham is not alright"? If the Nukes fly I wish to be at "Ground Zero"!( Nirvana at last?)

 

[JGcycle]

I feel that this short video puts things into perspective very poignantly:

 

[Mulezen]

Making History by Richard Cohen
”before you study history, study the historian”
Great book I’m barely half through