Seasick Pilgrims

I’m living and breathing thesis these days. Sometimes I look at other people’s blogs and I think that most of the time my blog is just, well, fluff. And I guess to some degree it is just a place to dump my random ramblings when I need a break from the heavier stuff. At the moment I’m working through writing a chapter on a particularly ugly incident in Indonesian history and trying to portray it as fairly as possible and still get my point across. This is where I think most people fail to understand what the study and writing of history is all about. It’s not about memorizing and regurgitating dates, it’s about interpreting accounts of events. It’s about fairly portraying events, and if you’re good at it, finding a way to preserve the humanity of the people you are writing about. What is cool about it is that when you study history, you can literally study anything. Because history, from now until forever is everything that is behind us (and if you ask a buddhist, in front of us too).

If I ever become a lecturer or a teacher of history I will teach it from the present backwards. I mean think about it, moving from 300 years ago and going forward gives us no point of reference that we can relate to. But if you move backwards, you can tie these things to the present day. Students, people, need this type of reference to be able to understand WHY understanding history is important. If you can understand how we got from being a bunch of seasick pilgrims to the country we are today and you can understand how that relates to you, your outlook on life, and the current geo-political climate you are far more likely to be interested in studying it. But, if the pilgrims still evoke, in your mind, as they do mine, construction paper cut outs of turkeys and pilgrim hats and little else, well, then we know there is a vital link missing somewhere. Well, I do at least….