Studying history helps with an intellectual understanding of the slice of the past that was documented in history. So that’s helpful, but it’s not the same as the “experienced” past, where you have an emotional and intuitive understanding of how things worked.
The history of the middle ages, for example, pretty much only cover nobility. There’s not a lot of history about the day-to-day life of the bottom 90% of the people. You know, the kind of people you and I would have been if we had lived 1500 years ago.
Also, the past isn’t a homogeneous thing at all, neither in time nor in space. So things that might be true for 950 CE in one town might be totally different two towns over or 50 years later.
Just as a small example in the more recent history:
Women not working outside the home was the standard for the middle class in 1950. It was not the standard for the middle class in 1900. Then it was the standard for nobility, but regular women would be working full-time jobs.
i’m not sure why you bring all of that up? i said studying history, that… obviously includes the things you mention, that is what it means to study history…
Because studying history is not enough to have an emotional and intuitive understanding of it, as I said.
The historical records are not deep enough. They don’t contain all the stuff you get from having lived through a period and/or personally knowing someone who did.
Studying history helps with an intellectual understanding of the slice of the past that was documented in history. So that’s helpful, but it’s not the same as the “experienced” past, where you have an emotional and intuitive understanding of how things worked.
The history of the middle ages, for example, pretty much only cover nobility. There’s not a lot of history about the day-to-day life of the bottom 90% of the people. You know, the kind of people you and I would have been if we had lived 1500 years ago.
Also, the past isn’t a homogeneous thing at all, neither in time nor in space. So things that might be true for 950 CE in one town might be totally different two towns over or 50 years later.
Just as a small example in the more recent history:
Women not working outside the home was the standard for the middle class in 1950. It was not the standard for the middle class in 1900. Then it was the standard for nobility, but regular women would be working full-time jobs.
i’m not sure why you bring all of that up? i said studying history, that… obviously includes the things you mention, that is what it means to study history…
Because studying history is not enough to have an emotional and intuitive understanding of it, as I said.
The historical records are not deep enough. They don’t contain all the stuff you get from having lived through a period and/or personally knowing someone who did.