There are three ways we seem to look at our past. First, as antiquarians, we see the past as something to be venerated and sanctified. If you ever find yourself nostalgic for a time since gone, for home, wherever and whatever that might be, you might be an antiquarian. We also have a tendency to monumentalize the past.
destructively dictatorial
We look at the giant ideas and people that came before us and strive for the greatness they once knew. I will, every now and again, find myself at a sporting event or a political rally and someone will sing the anthem or America the Beautiful, or something of that ilk and tears will come to my eyes as I think of all that has been accomplished in American history and all the good that we are capable of with all the power we possess. These moments are always tempered by the bad that has been done in American history, but the good is still there and that hope is what pushes me forward. In these moments I am a monumentalist.
atlas shrugged because he could
Finally, we can be critical of our history. We can understand our past as so much rubble to be sifted through. We cannot hope to rebuild the past as it was as the monumentalists would have, and we cannot actually reach our past and hold on to it as the antiquarians would like, so we simply build anew from the rubble that’s left behind. The images might be similar, but time has moved on, we are further down the path, and what worked once will never work again. So are the thoughts of the critical historian. I think we all find ourselves taking one of these positions at some time or another. I imagine that someone who chooses only one view and sticks to that would be either aggressively objectivist (critical), destructively dictatorial (monumental), or carelessly constructivist (antiquarian). As we strive to make our lives in this present that is always shaped by the past our only hope is to call on the particular form of history that best suits the situation. Below is a prime example of what I’m talking about:
This picture was taken in 1943 London by Hans Wild. The war was still raging, London was still being bombed, and this group of kids were still finding ways to entertain themselves. It’s moments like these, moments where we call on past forms of life in a world where those forms are no longer tenable in order to create a new life in the present we find ourselves in, that our humanity reveals itself. It is this ability to juggle the past and to make-do in the present, more than anything else, that uniquely marks us as human beings. We can easily look at the picture above and say that it’s just a bunch of kids trying to escape the present, playing games in order to forget the constant state of destruction that is their lives. But that’s not what’s happening. These kids are actively building their future. They are envisioning a world beyond this destruction, a world where theater won’t be done in the same way, but it will still be done. A world where fun won’t be had in the same way, but it will still be had. A world where people won’t work together in the same way, but they will still find a way to work together. A new beginning will always look like the past but it will be clear that it is never and never can be the past it might resemble.
Image Credits: shelly the republican; Kurt Christensen; Hans Wild
The three different versions of history come from Nietzsche’s Unfashionable Observations.
