Sunday, October 22, 2006
Oh-no, JJ: in the end, all history is local...
Uh-oh, JJ. It looks like you're up against a mass of historians that, to one degree or another, march to the Total History Annales School tune. Will Fernand Braudel or Marc Bloch or Jacques LeGoff ever be more famous than Gibbon? And with Joseph A. Amato making crazy statements like "All history is local," (p. 191) we aren't dealing with one disciplinary schism, but many. How will you counter them all, JJ? Are you stocked up on enough espresso to deal with these 20th and 21st century titans? Or, as Harold Bloom said about Harry Potter, will time obliterate this rubbish? That is, do you even need to concern yourself with it?
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11 comments:
First, wtf is it to march to the Total History Annales School tune?
Check this out in spare time: click here.
What MFT was actually intending to write is that the present ethos is that Gibbon can cackle all he wants, but All History is Loco
JJ, you're not much for doomsayer history, at least in being a fan of Spengler, are you?
Which Spengler, the one who wrote "Decline of the West" [he was so wrong, eh?], or the current manifestation out of Singapore who carries proudly a doomy gloomy nom de plume? MFT, you would agree, I think, that the historical record is rich in civilizations which, in fact, did meet their doom?.
There is, again I think, fair room for the intelligent, well-articulated, thoughtful, has- evidence- marshalled, doomsayer. It is surely risky business, pegging your rep on doomsaying, but ultimately it is not the style, or purpose, that counts, but who saw more clearly and more fully. A scholiast of myriad detail, who scrupulously maintains the proper mocking attitude to the "doomsayer", and revels being stranded in the literal shores [pun intended, sorry] of the Longue Duree, and then gets promptly and thoroughly clobbered by the doom "he who was mocked" predicted, is not my idea of The Good Historian. Unless, like Francis Fujikawa [spelling?], taking pride in missing Something Big Before Your Very Nose is considered a requirement for entrance to Club Minerva.
Doomsaying is definitely not the center of man's attempts to understand the flow of events through time [nor should it be], and those who indulge in it must be aware that the downside, if they are wrong, is far more 'down" than is the upside if they are right. [there may, sadly, be no upside at all to being right in this case]. But it would be a mistake, in my opinion, to apriori dismiss such efforts as without serious value.
AA, hold the Canadian bacon. I asked if JJ was a fan of Spengler because it's analogous (although not exact) to Gibbon's Decline and Fall.
1st) As for predicting the future, like Fukuyama (the spelling is probably different in Canadistan) did with his "history has ended" phrase, I'll leave that to the Social Scientist soothsayers.
2nd) To say that the West, or the U.S., is in a bit of a clash with Islam, and that it's necessary to do something about it, right now, I'd ascent. I can't tell you what's going to happen in fifty years, if the U.S. will be overrun with Imams and fatwas. I do know what I'd do about it if I was still around. Islam should take stock in how the U.S.S.R appraised the U.S. in a mock war-game scenario. They decided that it would be impossible to ever invade, and hold the United States (if I remember right, alot of this was based off firearms per U.S. citizen data).
I'm not at the point in my life to sit and make predictions, but I appreciate yours because I do understand that ideology and vision shapes the future. It usually — or never — turns out the way that was imagined, but it's necessary to keep moving in a direction.
While Pepe believes that socialism liberates, my Libertarian ethos says it does more to shackle, and thus he and I are symbolic representations of one general current in the history of humanity: that is, freedom and liberation. Pepe sees freedom in whatever it is he sees. And I see freedom through ascribing the most agency possible to individuals. I would hope someday Pepe wakes up and smells the fatwas and begins to take Islam seriously. As much as I lambast France, I don't want to see harm come to the Franks (this is one of the many points where I part with O'Reilly).
I hope that clarified what I was trying to goad JJ into. Also: I hope you can understand why I'm suspicious of all doomsayers.
Hate Spengler. Some Romanian guy and I would drink plastic bottles of freshly imported tsuica and laugh like lunatics at his Decline of the Breast or whatever it was.
Yes, his Decline of the Breast sadly failed to foresee the Silicon Evolution
Not to mention the dot-cum bust!
Alright, one more shiet pun and I'm pulling the car over.
Sorry, dad.
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