Have you taken an interest in history? If so, what period and what part of the world have you found interesting?
I went through a period where I read some rather lengthy books by (I think her name was) Allison Wier about King Henry the XIIIth, Queen Elizabeth, the 100 year war, etc... I thought that period was pretty interesting.
I'm a fan of learning about the American revolution, and the early restoration of the church fascinates me, but I'm curious about what periods of history interest other people and why.
--Ray
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I'm not slow; I'm special. (Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)
As a student of history from a world standpoint, I find the changes in society, government and personal standards to be a ripe field for study.
We seem to be cyclical in our natures as human beings. Like the Romans and Greeks who spent their time contemplating 'higher thought' we never seem to marry our actions to those noble ideals to develop ourselves toward a higher plane. Rather, our actions seem almost disproportionally aimed to the gutter despite all of our witty and clever thoughts. As our society becomes more 'enlightened' by the wiz-dumb of man, we lose out on the blinding LIGHT of the true wisdom of our Father.
When I was just a kid, my parents told me some very important words that I have tried to use throughout raising my young'uns and in trying to "re-raise" the young'uns of others who were unfortunate enough to have been raised by wolves.
They are this: "You are free to express whatever opinions and ideas that pop into your head at any time, but remember that no one has to like them, or even agree with them. But that doesn't make your ideas and opinions wrong. It just means that what you think might not be RIGHT FOR THEM at this time."
We have a society that SEEKS to be offended by a word as some sort of badge of just how sophisticated we are. What a load of manure! People who truly are sophisticated aren't ruffled by opinion because they are sufficiently grounded in their own person to realize that while someone's words may hurt their 'wittle feewings' that the other persons' comments aren't the only truth in the universe.
But that doesn't excuse the histrionics and bashing that I have been reading about of late.
All through the history books I have in my collection, I have noticed a disturbing truth. History is always written by the winners or those who presume themselves to be the winners. Those who have been sanctioned for whatever reason DO possess a truth that they have to share or be rendered invisible to the world. And do we really want that?
If I become invisible by sanction today, who is to say that it isn't YOUR turn tomorrow? And with every passing day, the freedom we all claim to need and enjoy evaporates as fast as dew in August.
I just have to wonder why even within this microcosm of thought and passion that is typed into the boards that the lessons of history seem to repeat themselves with such frequency. . .? Santayana told us that if we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.
Have people forgotten that opinions are like bellybuttons - EVERYONE has one! So why does it seem to be such a shock to people all through recorded history when someone shares their opinion and someone else takes offense at that opinion and that choice to be offended starts a minor war of words? That's called DIALOGUE according to my speech teacher.
If the intent of history and the lessons of our past mean anything at all, shouldn't we be MORE WILLING to talk and say what we REALLY think so that we can sort out all of our 'pieces and parts' together? Or did we conveniently forget that the person we are "anonymously" replying to in a posting is literally our brother or sister?
History is funny. Just like Cain and Abel. Except now we issue press releases and take fake photos of 'reality as we see it' to publish our version of the truth.
And for the record, the "late, great unpleasantness" is a personal favorite time in the history of this nation. I was blessed to have a teacher who was between 90 and 9,000 years old who literally had her class notes penned onto PARCHMENT. And I swear she lived the events she was describing because she just plain had too much firsthand information to have missed it.
Most of what we know about war, history and society comes from whomever took the time to write down a fragment or two of what they saw in their world when they raised the blinds or opened the shutters for the day.
And since my house isn't located where your house is, my version of how the day is going will not match your version. Does that mean mine doesn't count because I am not a big voice on the boards or because what I say makes you unhappy?
Welcome to the world. We all get a piece of it to make our own history in. Occassionally, we brush our history bubble up against the bubble of another person. Whether we seamlessly glide past them or become prickly and pop is OUR choice, not theirs.
That's why I love history.
I can learn from those who chose the sword over the plowshare or I can create a bloodbath for myself and blame someone else for my poor choices.
Wonder how our country would look without people willing to say what they thought way back in 1776? I think we'd be singing "God Save the Queen" a whole lot at our baseball games.
Nothing wrong with that truth.
It serves a lot of God's children.
But it was never meant to be OUR truth in America.
David A. Bednar said: "Certainly clumsy, embarrassing, unprincipled, and mean spirited things do occur in our interactions with other people that would allow us to take offense. However, it ultimately is impossible for another person to offend you or to offend me. Indeed, believing that another person offended us is fundamentally false. To be offended is a choice we make; it is not a condition inflicted or imposed upon us by someone or something else."
Maybe we should start a book on the history of being offended by a word. It would make a best seller.
Well, I think a lot of people know that I like the Colonial Era and the Revolutionary Era. I do not like to study the wars of any era. I do like the Civil War Era as well. The Elizabethean Era is interesting though my main reading there was about Mary Queen of Scots. The Restoration period is very exciting to me.
I took World Civilizattions my first semester of College when I was barely 18. It was so interesting to learn about Asian culture. And we covered so much information in general though that I don't think I gained much due to my information overload problems. We were supposed to do a paper on lessons of history of something thereabouts. It weighed on my shoulders like a ton of bricks. I didn't have a clue what to write as my thinking was not synthesized. It is not like it was in my notes from class or the book as I recall. My brother was in the class and he had taken AP history at his Jesuit College Prep high school. My cousin was in the class as well. I did not discuss it with them. I went to my parent who has read avidly about history. I was impressed with their knowledge. After expounding on their own, they went and got a book by Will Durant and had me use it as well. Yes, I cheated using my parent and Will Durant. Not a word of it was mine nor did I give credit to the source. I was not yet LDS. I would later feel so guilty. It haunts me to this day. Yet, it had made me think so much about the question through the years and the lessons of history. It looks like AlabamaBelle has some good thoughts on the subject as well. Some day I hope to have a better handle on it all.
I would love to visit the 1st 3.5 billion years of the earth's history to see how life evolved. I'd need a microscope, because there weren't any Eurkaryotes (ameobas, plants, animals) till the last billion years.
Organi: Maybe you did... :) Maybe you were busy helping evolution along...
So Lundbaek sent me this PM on this topic, and I thought I'd share it... cuz well... I'm just that kind of guy...
A fault in my PC prevents me from posting on the Bountiful forum, and I'm house bound with a pinched sciatic nerve. But one thing I find interesting about history is the different perspectives people, cultures, and nations have on events. My wife , who grew up in Denmark has a different perspective of, for example WWII and the so-called Cold War than I have. And her mother, who was a great reader, well, if anybody thinks I'm a conspiracy nut should have heard her go on about support for Nazi Germany from certain wealthy Americans.
In 12 years in Europe I've heard many things that I never heard about in history classes in US schools. And the only ancestors I had in the colonies during the Revolution/Rebellion were mostly Dutch who sided with England and got deported to Canada in 1783. A few interesting stories have filtered down from that family line.
When I did substitute teaching in high school history classes after retiring, I usually found a way to introduce the students to variations in the reporting of certain events, and I often used rival schools reporting of sports events as an example.
It all makes for an interesting study.
--Ray
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I'm not slow; I'm special. (Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)
Belle, a thoughtful and well-expressed analysis. I will take exception with one part however:
They are this: "You are free to express whatever opinions and ideas that pop into your head at any time, but remember that no one has to like them, or even agree with them. But that doesn't make your ideas and opinions wrong. It just means that what you think might not be RIGHT FOR THEM at this time."
I'll take that philosophy-of-post-modernism-inspired statement and generalize it to history and populations: Your ideas and opinions may very well be dead wrong, and not right for me or anyone else including you at any time. Using the term "you" as in the general sense "one" and not as "you" meaning Belle in particular.
If history has shown us anything, it has shown us the cycle of Nephite society writ globally: When peoples and nations live the standards of the gospel as they understand them, they prosper. When they don't, they lead themselves to destruction.
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The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life. - Julie Beck
I will insert my birthday sized candle of understanding into the darkness and hope that I can learn.
My family was atypical in many important ways.
There is not now, nor has there ever been, any topic or idea that was considered taboo. And there has never been a time in which a persons need to know and understand was considered a bad time.
Daddy and Momma always gave us the room to learn, even when it meant running full tilt until we reached the end of our proverbial rope. Sometimes the jerk to a halt was very painful. But they never stopped us from learning just because our path wasn't what they might have chosen for us.
I believe that our Father operates in the same way. Though His immutable truths that transcend our finite understanding, we come to the end of our spiritual ropes and sometimes, we are jerked off of our feet by what we discover about ourselves and others.
To CONSIDER what someone else believes to be good for them isn't the same as ACCEPTING what they have said. We can only progress as fast as we can learn.
And I am more than willing to admit that I don't know much. I can't digest a truth others understand until I understand it myself. Even if that inconveniences someone by my ignorance.
The flu pandemic of 1918 gets me going, too, but the other way. It didn't kill the old and frail, like today's flu does, but rather young, healthy men and women.
While I would be interested in sampling the genetic code of the virus and studying it, we have already done that exhuming a victim of it who was buried in permafrost.
