Why history matters

When we reach the know-all teenage years we think we have the answer to everything but with a little bit of good luck and growing experience of life will bring us to a more balanced view of our abilities. However all too often history shows us intellectuals who do not grow into adult wisdom. Instead they keep the child’s sense of play and the teenager’s arrogance based on ignorance.
The intellectual like the teenager is sure the ways of his elders are the ways of silly old fools and that his strong vision is so much more powerful and far sighted than the blinkered, weak and dim vision of his elders.
He is sure that traditions and customs should die soon like the old fools who stand in the way of change. Intellectuals trust in their reasoning powers and are sure they have found the answers to the big questions. It seems so evident to them that those who disagree are not just wrong but both stupid and evil in wanting to keep power in the hands of old men and minds locked in a prison of tradition. Intellectuals aiming for change therefore refuse to debate since they can feel only contempt for those who are neither as intelligent nor as virtuous as they think themselves to be.
From their self-image they see the customs, beliefs, tastes and patriotism of ordinary people as the views of the stupid who are in need of the intellectuals’ leadership and enlightenment.
Institutions and traditions are the product of error prone human beings, worked out in an often hit and miss way, and there is nothing in that for the confident reason-trained intellectual to respect. The progressive intellectuals are therefore blinded by scorn and fail to see that healthy institutions and traditions are the result of generations of human beings who have worked out a way of living together by balancing out the aspirations and interests in the practical laboratory of life.
The progressive intellectual does not see that through the collective actions of generations a solution has been found to the practical tasks of people living together through a process of mutation and evolution. The evolved solution is not necessarily perfect and indeed is almost certainly not but it has evolved for one reason only – because it works.
We have lost something very valuable to helping us live together when we ask ourselves “why on earth should I have to do this?” With the help of the intellectuals’ barrister-like verbal dexterity, sharpened by his decades-long competitive climb up the career and exam ladder, it is a simple matter to find reasons why we should not. A barrister can always construct a plausible argument that is why he is who he is and what he is. So, if the intellectual, and the barrister don’t feel like doing something they can easily find a plausible reason why they are morally right in doing just what their urges tell them to do and that is normally instant gratification of their needs and desires.
Everyone in a society guided by the rootless intellectual and legalist is left floating freely on a sea of doubt bobbing up and down low in the water trying to find a way to reach land. Everyone left without traditions and customs must invent his own morality through his own powers of reason. And the reason is usually from first principles founded on utilitarianism and hedonism. The new sea-grown morality invented by each and every individual cannot by definition be shared instead it is all about the individual feeling good about himself, his, personal fulfilment, shopping and sex. The intellectuals and legalists have left both themselves, and us, free and adrift.
Nothing matters but the present moment because everything is permitted.
There is however a case to be made for the intellectuals in the knowledge that the evolved solution is unlikely to be perfect just as the bodies of living organisms are imperfect, although wonderfully designed and organised. The old ways were not always good in the past and as time moves along circumstances change and produce an additional pressure for reform.
The task of the historian and the political conservatives is to move forward by being aware of the past. They must respect the collective wisdom of the past and where tradition is weak or circumstances have changed then traditions and institutions must change, but cautiously. It is much more likely that an unconsidered change will damage what has been inherited than improve it. Just as the vast majority of mutations in a living organism will be damaging.
(By way of digression and I do like digressions the modern intellectual has come to his position of eminence by climbing a decades-high examination ladder. If climbing a ladder and passing exams in a select range of subjects is the only valid performance measure of intelligence then intelligent they are.)

Purpose of this blog

I would see history as not only letting us understand where we come from and who we are; that is questions set in the past or present tense. I would also like history to be a guide to the way we should move into the future as individuals and collectively.
I don't think that we will be able to find a science of history. I do not believe that there is an undiscovered theory of history somewhere "out there" but in a wider, yet more tentative sense, a deep sense of historic origins can help us form a way forward.
Indeed without a historic sense we are helpless as well as rootlesss in forming our plans.

My first blog

History is all about us. It is what comes before us - what comes after us - it begins with the beginning of time and will, perhaps, end with the end of time.

History is the story of how we came to be and what will become of us. it is the most personal of subjects but in its true sense vast. By following the train of cause and effect we go back to the origins of the universe. History therefore draws on what we learn from physics, biology, geology and every event which has caused us to exist and be the people we are.

If anyone finds his or her way to this blog please give me your views.