Shunya's Notes

Ghost Town in the Levant

(See an updated entry on Quneitra, including a video.)

Quneitra was once a bustling town in the Golan Heights and southwestern Syria's administrative capital with a population of 37,000. The word 'Quneitra' derives from Qantara, or 'bridge', between Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. Known for its abundant water resources, it has been continuously inhabited since the Stone Age. Over the millennia, many peoples, including Arameans, Assyrians, Caldeans, Persians, Greeks, and Arabs have occupied it.

In 1967, during the six-day war, Israel captured Quneitra. It then became a site of many battles but, except for a brief interlude, remained in Israeli hands until 1974, when a UN-brokered agreement led to an Israeli pullback. Before withdrawing, however, Quneitra was evacuated and systematically destroyed by the Israeli army (based on eyewitness accounts; UN General Assembly resolution 3240 in 1974 condemned Israel’s role in its destruction. Israel disputes this account). Many prominent Western reporters, agreeing with the UN and Syrian version of events, saw this as nothing short of an act of wanton brutality — a whole town methodically ransacked, dynamited, and bulldozed.

Quneitra lies undisturbed ever since, a ghost town riddled with land mines, an open-air museum of Middle-Eastern wars (Syria now shows it off as proof of Israeli malice). Church domes and minarets, blackened and broken, rise above the wasteland. Do these sights, I wondered, ever infuriate native sons into seeking compensation in kind? Behind the town, a barbed-wire fence marks the border with the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. Quneitra now falls within the UN-patrolled demilitarized zone. A UN peacekeeper accompanies all visitors to Quneitra who must first obtain a visitation permit from the Syrian government.  Here are some scenes from my visit on a rain-drenched afternoon in Feb 2001.

Do Unto Others...

An oft-repeated principle of morality is: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." This may sound nice but I have come to dislike it. What if I can plainly see that the situation and the needs of others are very different from mine? Notions of dignity, respect, and fairness vary from person to person. Consider, for instance, this household maid we had in India. Indian society has huge class barriers between maids and employers. I may well think it polite and inclusive to ask the maid to join me and my family for lunch on the same table, but this in tantamount to making improper demands on her; it reveals my bumbling naivete and callousness. The situation here, as almost everywhere else, calls for a different response than "what I would have others do unto me."

 

A vast improvement on this moral precept would be: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, if you were in their shoes." This requires that we expend the time and effort to understand the situation of others and imagine being in their shoes. What might be their needs and expectations, seen from their vantage point? What might be just and reasonable to us, if we were in their shoes? A name we give to this exercise is empathy – a better basis for moral action than the lazy and faulty assumption that others want to be treated exactly as I myself want to be treated.

 

Perhaps most people already understand the original precept in this more nuanced way, though I doubt it. I thought of emphasizing the point, just for the record. 

Blending at Google

Google, with its creative, youthful subculture, is famous as a great place to work and for its lengthy, grueling interview process that involves bizarre puzzles and brainteasers. A typical question is outlined below, followed by some of the responses to it I found on the net. As Google concedes, many of its questions do not have a single right response. They are designed to reveal a candidate’s approach to problem-solving. Feel free to share your own!

 

 

You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

 

A1: You simply jump out. As you are scaled down, the ratio of muscle mass to total mass remains the same. Potential energy is given by E = mgh. So, if E/m is unchanged (where E is the energy expended in expanding your leg muscles, and m is your mass), then h is unchanged. Mini-me jumps as high as me. This is the reason why grass-hoppers can jump about as high as people.

 

A2: I hardly think that anyone being shrunk down that small would even be able to get over the shock of the situation quickly enough to think themselves out of the situation. I'd probably spend a good 10 minutes just trying to figure what the hell happened and where the hell I was. It sounds like Google has been watching too many "Honey I Shrunk ..." movies.

 

A3: From the inside, put both hands and your head firmly against the glass. Plant your feet firmly and begin to rock the blender back and forth - like when you are rocking your car out of a snowbank - and gradually build up the momentum until you topple the blender over on its side. You have over 60 seconds to build up enough momentum to knock it over. Walk out.

 

A4: If your density stays the same then there is a higher concentration of particles inside than outside. Therefore the medium would equalize and particles would leave your body and you would end up with a density of 1(water). So as the pressure decreases so does volume. So eventually you would end up with 1/1 =1 so the blender would have no effect.

 

A5: Take off shirt and/or pants. Tie knots to close wrist and neck holes (or each pant leg). Push body against the side of the glass until just above the blades or as far up as possible. When the blades start, jump out over them with the shirt/pants over my head. Let the air vortex carry me up and out of the blender and float to a safe landing on the counter. :) Reminds me of girl scouts.

 

A6: First, I would be pissed that I was the height of a nickel. Second, I would commit suicide.

 

A7: Bah, I don't think merely staying alive in the blender is the way to go. You have no idea when or if the blender will ever be turned off. In fact, the fact that you've been placed in a blender in the first place implies that there is a malicious entity involved, someone who wants to see you minced.

 

A8: I’ll do nothing, because I will shortly implode and die from unbearable tensile forces.

 

A9: I'm confused, if you're the height of a nickel and you're thrown into a blender, wouldn't the fall kill or seriously injure you?

 

A10: I quickly realize that even if I get out, I am only the size of a nickel, and will probably never get laid again, so I place my neck on the blade and close my eyes till my 60 seconds are up.

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Note: 

   

I complete three months of blogging today (42 posts). A minor milestone but I feel good about it. I am grateful to those who leave thoughtful comments, or email me, or talk to me about it, and make this activity more engaging and worthwhile. 

 

StatCounter shows that I average 100+ unique visitors a day, of which ~15% are returnees (trends are pointing up). Other than the usual suspects, I don’t know who the other regulars are and would of course love to find out. Please post a comment or email me sometime; tell me how you found my blog, and perhaps even what you like/dislike about it, any memorable posts, etc. (I'm not fishing for compliments :-).

Democracy in Athens

(Below is an excerpt from a chapter on the Greeks from my review of Herodotus’ Histories. Any resemblance between classical Athens (5th cent. BCE) and a modern nation-state is not purely coincidental.)

 

The liberal-popular and the conservative-aristocratic emerged as the two dominant factions in Athenian democracy … The spirit of the agon (competition), fame, glory, honor and the desire to surpass all others were values enshrined even in the Homeric poems, particularly the Iliad. “It was widely accepted as 'natural', that the members of the community were unequal in resources, skills and style of life.”

 

In Herodotus’ prime, Athens was the dominant naval and imperial power … It offered military protection to members of the Athenian (Delian) league in exchange for tributes, euphemistically called contributions – other euphemisms include protection for military occupation; prison was dwelling; an Athenian military defeat was to have a misfortune. Athenians were granted homesteads in the colonies, cementing further their hold on them and squelching any moral objection from the participants. Athens relied on imports of fruits and merchandise from distant lands to supplement local produce like corn and salted fish, and maintained permanent garrisons abroad to ensure a steady supply. Many of the colonized though, even when they resented the politics of Athens, found its popular culture irresistible.

 

The professed objective of Athenian foreign policy was to aggressively promote democracies abroad in direct opposition to the more muted Spartan confederacy’s preference for oligarchies. But exceptions to high principle were frequently made for illiberal ends. At times, foreign territory was grabbed in the name of goddess Athena herself. In reality, wars were used to acquire wealth, to keep the economy humming, to flex their muscle of growing power, and to distract citizens from domestic issues.

 

Classical Athens soon turned into a wartime economy. Special interest groups in popular assemblies cloaked their impassioned speeches in the rhetoric of national interest and glory – deemed acceptable grounds for hostile military action even when others’ legitimate rights were mauled. Athens began asserting itself in all manner of allied causes and interfered in other nations' internal matters. It had shrewd orators – demagogues, idealists, pragmatists, with the ability to manipulate public opinion to catastrophic ends – illustrated by the Mitylene debate when the popular assembly, following the frenzied instigation of the demagogue Cleon, rashly voted to condemn all men in the rebellious colony to death to set an example.

 

In greater Hellas, Athens repeatedly invoked its role in the Persian wars as moral justification for present domination, backing it up with militant aggression, much to the exasperation of the second-rank powers and other ‘inward-looking’ city-states.  A generation after Herodotus, the great historian Thucydides thought the Peloponnesian war inevitable: Athens had become an unprincipled bully; they had to be checked. Their cultural effulgence had a dark side; they were victims of their own cupidity and recklessness. Their conduct towards other city-states, with its own self-serving logic and momentum, had set them on a road to disaster.

 

Some Athenians believed that a just society needed an inspired combination of philosophy and real-politick in a leader – a philosopher-king, but the production and predictable supply of such men proved utopian. Their democracy, too, depended on public awareness, responsibility, and participation to provide a bulwark against any willful abuse of power; conscious citizens were vital for its success in their asking – who are these men making decisions for me and my people? The disparity between the rich and the poor, and the knowledge gap between the civilized few and the superstitious many, had become enormous in Athens. Class conflict between wealthy landowners and less fortunate craftsmen, sailors and small traders became pervasive; the poor began asking awkward questions when reminded of their obligation to the polis. Thucydides portrays the fragile and corruptible nature of popular government and noble institutions, the twin spectacle of the juggernaut of history and an endlessly vulnerable humanity, egocentric leaders lusting for power and glory, and at times inevitability, in light of the often blind and contending cultural instincts of peoples – his is a stage portrait of man, the political animal.

The Birthplace of Ganesh?

(Text below written by Usha Alexander in May 06. For more pictures click here.)

Dodi Tal, considered the birthplace of Lord Ganesh, is a lake in Garhwal, western Uttaranchal. We hiked 44 km in 3 days, going up and down from about 5,000 ft to 11,000 ft, where we camped near the lake. Unfortunately, it was drizzly or overcast the whole time, so we couldn't view the snowy peaks all around. Still, the walk was incredibly beautiful, through the luminously green, high mountain woodlands of the early rainy-season, the cliffs punctuated by streams of clear water gushing from the rocks, with breathtaking drops falling away on one side of the path.

We had asked for two people to accompany us: a guide/cook and a porter, but when they turned up on the first morning, there were five of them! It seemed like overkill for only the two of us, but they all had large packs stuffed with provisions for our trip and we figured we couldn't turn any of them away, denying them their day's wages [Rs 225/$5]. So, we hiked up with an entourage of five men—a bit silly, but we had fun; and, as it turned out, their knowledge and assistance was invaluable to us lowlanders. The cook made hot breakfast and dinner each day; lunch was cobbled together in sporadic and makeshift chai stalls; one night they cooked a local wild veggie that tasted like asparagus.

They were all friendly, kind men, aged 15 to 55, who had crossed the border from Nepal years ago. All but the kid were incredibly competent guides with years of experience leading trekkers through the perilous high Himalayas for their livelihood (the kid was on summer vacation, working for the summer with his dad so he could earn some money to finish his education in Nepal; a sharp kid from a dirt poor family, he dreams of being a doctor; this was his first time trekking). The men told us all kinds of chilling stories of glacier crossings with tourists, of deaths they had witnessed, of people trapped in crevasses, frozen in icy waters. eesh! And they themselves can rarely afford anything but the shoddiest of equipment, footwear, and woolens, risking their lives much more than the tourists. Fortunately, we weren't crossing any glaciers. Instead, we walked through tiny little mountain villages; lower down, they grow wheat; higher up, they are shepherds, living in very basic wooden and piled-stone houses.

We met Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman to climb Mt. Everest (1984) and something of an Indian cultural icon; she just happened to be staying at the same campground as us that day, leading a group of young men on a trek arranged annually by the TATA Adventure Foundation, where she works (she said she was happy with her job and her employer, who had created a whole new department for her to lead). She seemed like a very sweet and gentle woman, also a native Garhwali who grew up in a village not far from here.

The people of Garhwal are an interesting ethnic blend. They speak Garhwali, closely related to Hindi (Nepali is a dialect of Garhwali); their religion is Hinduism. In appearance, they cover the map, ranging from light-skinned, brown haired (I even saw a couple of redheads), with European features (Eastern Europeans, in particular) to light-skinned, brown-haired, with more Tibetan/ East Asian features, to "red" skinned, to brown-skinned, and black haired, with or without varying degrees of the epicanthic fold. And all these different looks, that in the US might pass for different "races," were intermixed as the same people, in the same communities. We saw a demonstration of traditional Garhwali folk dance and I was surprised to see that it was nearly identical to Eastern European folk dance, and distinctly different from folk dance styles from other parts of India. It made me wonder about the population migrations and mixtures across the region in the centuries past. But so far, I haven't found anything informative on the subject.

Watching Movies – I

In the last eight weeks, I’ve seen over a dozen films. For the gazillion diehard fans of Shunya’s Notes, I thought I'd share their names and rate them on a 5-star scale. I don't watch a movie unless I’m reasonably sure it won't insult my intelligence, so most turn out to be satisfying enough and worth seeing (at least 3 stars). Call me a snob but I stand with Shyam Benegal in calling mainstream Bollywood / Hollywood cinema “a form of retarded art” and I've largely avoided it for years (except the odd film I see for social or anthropological reasons, and that rare exception to the rule).

 

The Motorcycle Diaries *****

The Chess Players *****

Ankur *****

Cry Freedom *****

Nishaant *****

Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion ****1/2

An Inconvenient Truth ****1/2

Shadow Kill ****1/2

Who Killed the Electric Car? ****1/2

Fidel ****

Tsotsi ***1/2

Born into Brothels ***

Water *

   

More discussion based on reader comments, if any.

The Enlightened Romantic

The Enlightenment began admirably by liberating men from despotic rulers, slavery, and serfdom, reducing superstition, the abject hold of religion, and creating the framework of human rights—its legacy is evident in present day social struggles. Inspired in part by the newly acquired scientific method, it also suggested that history can have a design, that it can converge to a universal civilization where men would come to acquire the same values, only error and prejudice block the path to the perfect society. It transformed human thought and action by nurturing the ideas of linear progress and 'perfectibility' of man. People can live by reason alone, once they give up superstition and fanaticism; mathematics and natural science will ultimately yield solutions to the moral, social, political and economic problems of humankind; scientific and 'objective' principles can steer history towards compatible, rational ends. Such ideas, in inflamed forms, influenced communism and numerous other excesses of secular faith. An immoderate love of social ideals, particularly in the name of progress or reason, often breeds its own tyrannies.

Romanticism rebelled against the ideological optimism of the Enlightenment: none can live by reason alone; people are also shaped by their roots, homeland, ties of blood and marriage, experiences, temperament and tradition—and other submerged suprarational forces integral to humans—which inform their various, at times, incommensurate ends. The logic of science does not extend to human behavior. "Values are not discovered, they are created; not found, but made by an act of imaginative, creative will, as works of art, as policies, plans, patterns of life are created." Diversity calls for celebration – there is merit in the age-old corporate solidarities and cultural mores by which human society holds together. It championed plurality of values, cultural history, and rejected the evaluation of civilizations by a single yardstick. This was a blow to the central Western belief thus far—religious or secular—that true human values are universal, immutable, timeless, that a perfect society was, in principle, realizable. Alas, in preaching tolerance for the diversity of values and aspirations, Romanticism, at times, swung towards extreme forms of relativism, nationalism, chauvinism, and irrationalism.

We are the children of both the Enlightenment and Romanticism, shift back and forth between them. Mine-fields lie at the extremes of each; we would do well to tread the middle ground, to survey the fault lines. In his celebrated works, Dostoevsky rationally interrogated the Reason of the Enlightenment, much as Foucault did later: "What is this Reason that we use? What are its historical effects ... limits ... dangers? How can we exist as rational beings, fortunately committed to practicing a rationality that is unfortunately crisscrossed by intrinsic dangers? ... this question ... is both central and extremely difficult to resolve. In addition, if it is extremely dangerous to say that Reason is the enemy that should be eliminated, it is just as dangerous to say that any critical questioning of this rationality risks sending us into irrationality." Only the exercise of reason, for instance, reveals the dangers in schemes that aim to rationalize society (or our conduct). Here are some worthy quotes:

Those who believe that final truths may be reached, that there is some ideal order of life on earth which may be attained, will, however benevolent their desires, however pure their hearts, however noble and disinterested their ideals, always end by repressing and destroying human beings in their march toward the Promised Land. [Isaiah Berlin]

Too often the excessive pursuit of one ideal leads to the exclusion of others, perhaps all others; in our eagerness to realize justice we come to forget charity, and a passion for righteousness has made many a man hard and merciless. There is, indeed, no ideal the pursuit of which will not lead to disillusion; chagrin waits at the end for all who take this path. Every admirable ideal has its opposite, no less admirable. Liberty or order, justice or charity, spontaneity or deliberateness, principle or circumstance, self or others, these are the kinds of dilemma with which this form of the moral life is always confronting us, making us see double by directing us always to abstract extremes, none of which is wholly desirable. [Michael Oakeshott]

... each man hears and understands the promptings of some allegiances more clearly than others. As the ancient Greek well knew, to honor Artemis might entail the neglect of Aphrodite ... That there should be many such [moral] languages in the world, some perhaps with familial likenesses in terms of which there may be profitable exchange of expressions, is intrinsic to their character. This plurality cannot be resolved by being understood as so many contingent and regrettable divergences from a fancied perfect and universal language of moral intercourse (a law of God, a utilitarian ‘critical’ morality, or a so-called ‘rational morality’). But it is hardly surprising that such a resolution should have been attempted: human beings are apt to be disconcerted unless they feel themselves to be upheld by something more substantial than the emanations of their own contingent imaginations. This unresolved plurality teases the monistic yearnings of the muddled theorist, it vexes a moralist with ecumenical leanings, and it may disconcert [one who looks] ... for uncontaminated ‘rational’ principles out of which to make it. [Michael Oakeshott]

Pluralism without relativism,* then, seems like a compelling political attitude. It admits the multiplicity of ideas, beliefs, values, yet does not call them equivalent. But debate inevitably continues on the boundaries between pluralism and relativism. The best kind of politics strives to mitigate the tyranny of groups against groups but with room enough for them to pursue their own idiosyncratic ends. Even so, if some values in a plural society prove incompatible (e.g., theocratic vs. secular, fascist vs. egalitarian), tragedy may become unavoidable. History warns against radical social experiments: better the change and progress attained via local negotiation, awareness, and activism. Sociopolitical change is best when organic—rising from the bottom rather than imposed from the top—the odds of assimilation improve dramatically. Representative rule, transparent and accountable, backed by law enforcement and a judiciary, i.e., democracy, may well be the least imperfect political system for modern, plural societies. Yet, can it be imported and made to flourish in not yet fertile terrain?

Can any of these be a primary end: liberty, equality, justice? All three cannot be realized in full measure simultaneously. In practice, ‘people who want to govern themselves must choose how much liberty, equality, and justice they seek and how much they can let go. The price of a free society is that sometimes, perhaps often, we make bad choices.’ Choice in a free society is inherently tragic—not all desirable virtues can coexist in full measure. Take choices in the economic realm for instance. We now widely approve of (economic) inequality to better accommodate current notions of liberty and justice.

(Note: This is a slightly modified excerpt from an essay I wrote many years ago.)

The Dilwara Temples

Many Indians claim that the Dilwara Jain temples of Mt. Abu are a more magnificient achievement than the Taj Mahal – both were stunningly ambitious, state-sponsored, multi-year, monumental, marble-work projects – but the claim is an imponderable to me. One difference, however, springs to mind: while thousands of art lovers and devotees also worked for a generation on each of the two Dilwara temples, the Taj, proof of an emperor's inability to rationally accept his lover's death, was built largely by hired men. I can understand a man's desire for a memorial to his lover; I also believe that a modest memorial need not be any less meaningful, but no, size clearly mattered to Shah Jehan. He had to divert enormous resources of state to fund his absurd private infatuation.

 

While I think the Taj is rather sublime – I am awed by its beauty each time I visit – the so-called "romance of its inspiration" bugs me. For the untold thousands who labored on it, Shah Jehan didn't even have the magnanimity to dedicate the Taj to, say, "all the lovers of Hindustan," or something similarly inclusive. The poet Sahir Ludhianvi, speaking for the masses, famously said of the Taj: "Ik shahanshah ney daulat ka sahaara ley kar / Ham ghareebon kee mohabbat ka uraaya hai mazaaq"  (An emperor relying so on his wealth / Has ridiculed the loves of the poor like us). On the other hand, the Dilwara temples, built half a millennium before the Taj,  seem to me expressions of a fairly democratic religiosity.

   

The temples lie a few miles from Mt. Abu, a picturesque hill resort centered on Nakki lake, atop an isolated feature of the Aravali Range in southern Rajasthan. Mt. Abu was once the HQ of the British Rajputana States Agency. If you read Hindi, check out the local rendition at a traffic square of the famous lines from Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

 

The two main temples at Dilwara, built in the northern Nagara style (as opposed to the southern Dravidian style), are the Vimala Vasahi temple (1031 CE) and Tejpal temple (1200 CE), known for the audacity and the delicacy of their rich marble-work. Unlike most other Indian temples, their exterior is starkly plain; it is the interior that is far more magnificent, especially the breathtaking chandelier-like marble ceilings and ornately carved brackets and pillars. The two temples were commissioned by the Solankis of Gujarat (a branch of the Chalukyas of southern and western India) and one of their former feudatories, the Vaghelas, respectively.

   

Sadly, photography at this exquisite global cultural heritage site was banned in 1992 for reasons that no one at the temples is willing to articulate clearly (why not allow it for a fee during a designated visiting hour at the least?). Orders, say the orderlies, issue from a managing trust, one that seems to me dominated by conservative and obscurantist Jain elders who, in their infinite and timeless wisdom, also deem it proper to bar menstruating women from entering the temple precincts (enforcing this is fortunately not easy – I looked around but saw no sniffer dogs ;-).

On History and Historians

‘To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born,’ Cicero declared, ‘is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?’ A good historian begins with the hard facts on public events and fragments of cultural life. But it takes more than what can be taught to become a great historian. He must also possess sensitivity, imagination, depth of perception, distance, and that uncanny ability to synthesize vast bits of knowledge, the kind found in great novelists. He must attempt to enter the society he studies, to see the world as its members saw it, and understand, to the extent possible, what it was like to live in it. He must examine the psychology, morals, aspirations, and assumptions of ordinary people.

 

The conception of man as an actor, a purposive being, moved by his own conscious aims as well as causal laws, capable of unpredictable flights of thought and imagination, and of his culture as created by his effort to achieve self-knowledge and control of his environment in the face of material and psychic forces which he may use but cannot evade—this conception lies at the heart of all truly historical study.
[—Isaiah Berlin]

 

The present indeed derives from the past but its course remains ever fluid, non-linear, pliable yet unpredictable. However, it's not entirely a random walk in the contingent—culture renders some steps more probable than others. People come into a world, inherit ideas and traditions, project themselves in time, and die. Cultures consist of ideas, beliefs, values that shape people but people shape these same ideas, beliefs, values. In this sense, it is simultaneously true that history creates people and that people create history (in doing so, some are deemed heroes and some villains).

 

Inseparable from all narratives is a particular instantiation of politics, identity, and culture. There's no impartial and omniscient chronicler of events, no 'scientific' history. Facts are one thing, their interpretation another; only the former can be objective. As in Kurosawa's Rashomon, there are only particular interpretations of most facts, which may, of course, coincide at times. The louder or the more articulate frequently prevail. We are fortunate to have Herodotus' account of the ancient Greco-Persian war, an account that nevertheless led the non-Athenians to declare its Athenian author a father of lies. 

 

‘What the historian says will, however careful he may be to use purely descriptive language, sooner or later convey his attitude. Detachment is itself a moral position. The use of neutral language ('Himmler caused many persons to be asphyxiated') conveys its own ethical tone.’* History will continue to be rewritten, in response to new biases and grievances. Howard Zinn, for instance, outlines his own approach in A People's History of the United States,

 

         ... in telling the history of the United States ... we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities [pretending to a common interest] and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people ... not to be on the side of executioners.

 

Thus, in that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history, I prefer to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, of the Spanish American war as seen by the Cubans, the conquest of Philippines as seen by the black soldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by southern farmers, the First World War as seen by the socialists, the Second World War as seen by pacifists, the New Deal as seen by blacks in Harlem, the postwar American empire as seen by the peons in Latin America ... to the limited extent that any one person ... can 'see' history from the standpoint of others.

 

My point is not to grieve for the victims and denounce the executioners. Those tears, that anger, cast into the past, deplete our moral energy for the present. And the lines are not always clear. In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate ... turn on other victims ... as they are jammed together into the boxcars of the system ... 

In The Idea of History, RG Collingwood wrote: ‘All history is contemporary history: not in the ordinary sense of the word, where contemporary history means the history of the comparatively recent past, but in the strict sense: the consciousness of one’s own activity as one actually performs it. History is thus the self-knowledge of the living mind. For even when the events which the historian studies are events that happened in the distant past, the condition of their being historically known is that they should vibrate in the historian’s mind.’ Does this not render the very idea of a bygone golden age problematic?