The
study of history for the purpose of comprehending what has gone
before and to abstract from it patterns of behavior that may be
repeated is an interesting avocation that one may purse for a
lifetime usefully as it fits reasonably well into a philosophy of
history and a philosophical consideration of human behavior at a
general social level as well as that of in an individual level.
Individual do comprise social history though one may view them
concatenated as a society or culture. Subjective psychology or
epistemological content of individuals within organizations from
intra-social micro scale such as dyadic relationships to a corporate
and state scale affect the behavior of the organization.
Organizations such as states at the national or empirical scale have
structures that recur over history into the future though they may be
and often are new synthetic forms comparable metaphorically to the
aggregations of bits of continents that formed the state of Alaska
over eons with tectonic drift.
Individuals learn institutionally within organizational agents of socialization
that indoctrinate and train youth. One found that in the NAZI youth
movement and the content of educational indoctrination for hate is
well expressed in certain Middle Eastern nations regarding Jews and
Israel. History is the iceberg below the surface and the present is
the tip of the burg above the surface that living people experience.
The past does not of course entirely pre-determine present behavior
of individuals or nations and civilization yet the inertial forces of
continuity that comprise the complete economic compresent elements do
have historical continuity that continues into the present.
Nations
and other large social organization have organizations within such
that the entirety might be comparable to a cell with its organelles
and other parts including D.N.A. Challenges and responses occurs from
within and without the nation-cell to the global existential state of
affairs.
An
example of historical continuity might be that of two allies from the
First World War; Germany and Turkey that were then the primary Axis
powers. Maybe they share historical periods of opposition to the
existence of Jews or of the Jewish state. Since each are in NATO and
have excellent military histories the future possible policies of
NATO without the United States being a member are interesting and
complex to consider, and I won’t do that here, instead, because of
limited time I wanted to write a little more about the value of
learning history well enough to develop one's own theories of history
and test them against those of others and actual history.
Writing
on a lunch break; There is concrete present contemporary history
and all of the things people think and national policies and history
that tensor them in particular directions forward in time, and there
is an abstract synthetic analysis of the contents of each of the
nations, civilizations and their history that one might develop and
interpret current affairs and directions with. If one has a good
purpose for learning existential historical analysis (I liked
Sartre’s books such as Being and Nothingness and the Critique of
Dialectical Reason as well as Toynbee’s Study of History”, such
as trying to configure relations among nations in a socially
beneficial direction if possible, it is useful to understand the role
f major historical institutions such as the Catholic Church, The
Muslim World and so forth to comprehend how they affect the formation
of a state and its policies within a heterodox international
political environment. It is useful to understand how economics,
education, and energy plus food productions have determined national
and international policies. T is useful to learn what effect elites
have on determining the structure of state establishment even if one
wants to reform capitalism or transition to ecological economics
nationally.
There
is more to history than just abstract documents of dubious accuracy
that recorded it for present readers; history is that which went
before (such as the history of the Universe of which the present
instant, relativistically framing it, occurs entirely because of the
exteriorities of relations and space-time presentation of the energy
field locked into a steady state through decoherence ( physics term).
Toynbee
noted that the Greek city-states were not able to politically adapt
to the challenge of the new ‘federalism’ or nation-state that
Rome presented, and so they were defeated. Rome too did not adapt to
many challenges not the least of which was the failure to equal the
Huns in the use of horse calvary to travel as much as 200 miles a
day. Today a challenge for the world is to adapt to new and reformed
egalitarian capitalism that coheres within ecospherically synergistic
economic procedures. Unfortunately human lifetime is limited thought
the institutions continue on. There is little time for real learning
much less to acquire the political knowledge of the way to reform
society so that it can adapt to the external Toynbeen challenges of
global warming, mass spices extinction, population and consumption
pressures and so forth.
