Barefoot Bree
07-07-2005, 08:28 PM
A few weeks ago I stumbled across an old book in the local library, Historical Enigmas, by Hugh Ross Williamson (originally published in 1955!). He used detective skills to try to answer twenty or so historical mysteries, from the true identity of the Man in the Iron Mask, to who killed “the princes in the tower” of London. I never did read many of the chapters, because I wasn’t very familiar with the history involved, but I kept going back to the first opening chapter. Finally, I gave up and typed almost the whole thing into my computer so I could keep a copy.
The reason it so captured my attention was the concept of historical “myths”, or frameworks for viewing history. This may be an old concept to many of you, but it was new to me – or at least I had never seen it spelled out quite this effectively.
Some excerpts from the chapter:
Behind the particular of propaganda lies the general of myth. Certain historians, that is to say, assume that ‘history’ as a whole can have a ‘meaning’ – or, at least, a ‘plot’ like a novel – and that they know what it is. The usual myth, underlying most school and university text-books, is the myth of progress. Events are selected and narrated in such a way as to make a kind of pageant with the apotheosis of the present day as a grand finale. We stand near the crest of a hill, looking back upon the main road which leads clearly up to us and will take us on to the summit not far ahead. That, broadly speaking, is what has become known as the ‘Whig interpretation of history’ or ‘the Liberal view’. Though it is less popular than it was – since recent events have engendered a healthy scepticism and reference to history books of the late nineteenth century provoke rueful hilarity – man’s addiction to optimism will probably prevent its total disappearance.
Another myth, which has much in common with it, is what may be called ‘the myth of the Missing Acorn’. Devotees of this myth, when they see an oak tree, have only one preoccupation – to find the acorn from which it grew. Instead of looking at the tree, they elevate the missing acorn into an object of veneration. They talk about the Saxon folk-moot and the grandeur of free institutions and fail to notice that Parliament is now in fact a collection of careerists, backed by rival financial interests, who have surrendered their personal judgments to the demands of party whips and who are without real power – since, as G.K. Chesterton noted as long ago as 1917, ‘a vote is now about as valuable as a railway ticket when there is a permanent block on the line’.
Or, to take a rather different application of the same myth, they do not look at the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church as it is today in every country in the world’ they try to reconstruct what it may have been like in a small community in Palestine in the year A.D. 40 and then express indignant surprise that the two do not look the same.
The Acorn myth can be combined with the Progress myth to give almost any desired result, for by varying the stresses practically any pattern can be made. Some of the variations are the Ebb-and-Flow and the Demand-and-Response and the Hegelian Dialectic – thesis, antithesis, synthesis: the ever lasting pendulum.
There are, however, two ‘myths’ which stand apart from the rest in that they postulate an objective and unchanging principle by reference to which the meaning of history can be seen. One is the Christian; the other is the Marxist. The Marxist myth sees history as a struggle for power; the Christian as the dealings of God with the world.
The principle of objectivity which governs both can be illustrated by reverence to the most easily accessible of all history books – the Old Testament. This is ‘history’ interpreted as the dealings of Jehovah with the Chosen People, with whom he made a unique Covenant. The objective principle is this Covenant relationship. Foreign policies, armed invasions, sociological trends, national calamities, the careers of great men, are all treated as illustrative, in one way or another, of that principle and are entirely subsidiary to it. It, on the one hand, dictates the selection of events recorded and, on the other, gives meaning to any event, great or small, which may be selected.
In a similar way, Marxism sees laws and constitutions, wars and revolutions, political groupings and economic policies, as by-products or weapons of the unchanging class-struggle for power, irrespective of the details of nationality or period. And Christians see them as the working out of the New Covenant – the relationship of Christ-in-the-Church with the world outside the Church – as the Jews saw (and see) them in relation to the Old.
These ‘objective myths’, it will be noticed, differ in kind from the various forms of the subjective Progress-Acorn myth. By postulating an independent criterion, they escape the fatuousness of trying to find a pattern from billions of events. They do not pretend to arrive at ‘a philosophy of history’; on the contrary, they make history part of their philosophy. A Christian believes one thing, a Marxist materialist another. But both have already their criterion of ‘significance’ and this they apply to history. They say not ‘history teaches’ but ‘history illustrates’.
[…]
Some of us see a way of escape by reorientating ‘history’ to the oldest and most discredited of the myths, which is radically different from all I have so far mentioned – the Great Man myth. This, which is compatible with Christian but incompatible with Marxist ‘objectivity’, insist that ‘history’ is nothing but the relationship and interaction of characters and that, under God, events are determined, destinies of people shaped, and forms of government altered by men and women who, by birth or genius or beauty, are in a position to impose their will upon their fellows. This truth has been best summed up in the mot, ‘It was not the Carthaginian army which crossed the Alps; it was Hannibal’. And still less was that epic crossing an inevitable manifestation of the decreased purchasing power of the Roman denarius or a by-product of a constitutional crisis in Carthage.
Looking back, I can say that my formal education in history fell most definitely into the Progress Myth. I can recall a brief glimpse of cavemen, a sideswipe at the Babylonians (for the sole purpose of trumpeting the Code of Hammurabi), and then it was off to the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and on to recorded European history. The Dark Ages were truly dark, until the miracle of the Renaissance restored our forward momentum. I recall being rather shocked when I discovered that there were other great civilizations, as well – it seemed to my teenage mind that the peoples talked about in my history book were the only ones on earth at the time. (But then, that may just have been my ADD.)
Lately, however, I’ve come more to the Great Man Myth way of thinking. It seems truer to me, in an Occam’s Razor kind of way. No need to add god’s hand or nebulous class struggles to the mix. Individuals struggle for power, yes, but only rarely do entire huge groups come into play.
Historical “myths” were also touched upon by British columnist George Monbiot, in his online essay God of the Soil. (http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/03/22/god-of-the-soil-/)
What happened between the time of Abraham and the time of Christ was that the nomads, having seized the fertile soils where the farmers dwelt, settled down. While they still looked back with longing upon the lives of their ancestors, their theology shifted to match their circumstances.
With this shift came something new: a belief in progress. The philosopher John Gray has pointed out that, while pagans typically see history as a cyclical process, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all claim to be working towards a denouement: “salvation is the culmination of history”.(11) The followers of these religions see life not as an endless cycle of hubris and nemesis, but as a journey towards a moment of transformation.
To me, this partly explains a lot of the end-of-the-world theology running around. If you view history through the Progress Myth – well, there’s got to be a “The End” sometime. A more pagan, cyclical view of history has no end – many “primitive” cultures postulated they were in the midst of one of several gigantic cycles of time. The Great Man Myth has neither precise cycles nor an “endable” storyline – it’s more the meandering path of a butterfly.
My questions to you are: which myths were you taught? Which inform your view of history today? Are there any others you can name?
The reason it so captured my attention was the concept of historical “myths”, or frameworks for viewing history. This may be an old concept to many of you, but it was new to me – or at least I had never seen it spelled out quite this effectively.
Some excerpts from the chapter:
Behind the particular of propaganda lies the general of myth. Certain historians, that is to say, assume that ‘history’ as a whole can have a ‘meaning’ – or, at least, a ‘plot’ like a novel – and that they know what it is. The usual myth, underlying most school and university text-books, is the myth of progress. Events are selected and narrated in such a way as to make a kind of pageant with the apotheosis of the present day as a grand finale. We stand near the crest of a hill, looking back upon the main road which leads clearly up to us and will take us on to the summit not far ahead. That, broadly speaking, is what has become known as the ‘Whig interpretation of history’ or ‘the Liberal view’. Though it is less popular than it was – since recent events have engendered a healthy scepticism and reference to history books of the late nineteenth century provoke rueful hilarity – man’s addiction to optimism will probably prevent its total disappearance.
Another myth, which has much in common with it, is what may be called ‘the myth of the Missing Acorn’. Devotees of this myth, when they see an oak tree, have only one preoccupation – to find the acorn from which it grew. Instead of looking at the tree, they elevate the missing acorn into an object of veneration. They talk about the Saxon folk-moot and the grandeur of free institutions and fail to notice that Parliament is now in fact a collection of careerists, backed by rival financial interests, who have surrendered their personal judgments to the demands of party whips and who are without real power – since, as G.K. Chesterton noted as long ago as 1917, ‘a vote is now about as valuable as a railway ticket when there is a permanent block on the line’.
Or, to take a rather different application of the same myth, they do not look at the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church as it is today in every country in the world’ they try to reconstruct what it may have been like in a small community in Palestine in the year A.D. 40 and then express indignant surprise that the two do not look the same.
The Acorn myth can be combined with the Progress myth to give almost any desired result, for by varying the stresses practically any pattern can be made. Some of the variations are the Ebb-and-Flow and the Demand-and-Response and the Hegelian Dialectic – thesis, antithesis, synthesis: the ever lasting pendulum.
There are, however, two ‘myths’ which stand apart from the rest in that they postulate an objective and unchanging principle by reference to which the meaning of history can be seen. One is the Christian; the other is the Marxist. The Marxist myth sees history as a struggle for power; the Christian as the dealings of God with the world.
The principle of objectivity which governs both can be illustrated by reverence to the most easily accessible of all history books – the Old Testament. This is ‘history’ interpreted as the dealings of Jehovah with the Chosen People, with whom he made a unique Covenant. The objective principle is this Covenant relationship. Foreign policies, armed invasions, sociological trends, national calamities, the careers of great men, are all treated as illustrative, in one way or another, of that principle and are entirely subsidiary to it. It, on the one hand, dictates the selection of events recorded and, on the other, gives meaning to any event, great or small, which may be selected.
In a similar way, Marxism sees laws and constitutions, wars and revolutions, political groupings and economic policies, as by-products or weapons of the unchanging class-struggle for power, irrespective of the details of nationality or period. And Christians see them as the working out of the New Covenant – the relationship of Christ-in-the-Church with the world outside the Church – as the Jews saw (and see) them in relation to the Old.
These ‘objective myths’, it will be noticed, differ in kind from the various forms of the subjective Progress-Acorn myth. By postulating an independent criterion, they escape the fatuousness of trying to find a pattern from billions of events. They do not pretend to arrive at ‘a philosophy of history’; on the contrary, they make history part of their philosophy. A Christian believes one thing, a Marxist materialist another. But both have already their criterion of ‘significance’ and this they apply to history. They say not ‘history teaches’ but ‘history illustrates’.
[…]
Some of us see a way of escape by reorientating ‘history’ to the oldest and most discredited of the myths, which is radically different from all I have so far mentioned – the Great Man myth. This, which is compatible with Christian but incompatible with Marxist ‘objectivity’, insist that ‘history’ is nothing but the relationship and interaction of characters and that, under God, events are determined, destinies of people shaped, and forms of government altered by men and women who, by birth or genius or beauty, are in a position to impose their will upon their fellows. This truth has been best summed up in the mot, ‘It was not the Carthaginian army which crossed the Alps; it was Hannibal’. And still less was that epic crossing an inevitable manifestation of the decreased purchasing power of the Roman denarius or a by-product of a constitutional crisis in Carthage.
Looking back, I can say that my formal education in history fell most definitely into the Progress Myth. I can recall a brief glimpse of cavemen, a sideswipe at the Babylonians (for the sole purpose of trumpeting the Code of Hammurabi), and then it was off to the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and on to recorded European history. The Dark Ages were truly dark, until the miracle of the Renaissance restored our forward momentum. I recall being rather shocked when I discovered that there were other great civilizations, as well – it seemed to my teenage mind that the peoples talked about in my history book were the only ones on earth at the time. (But then, that may just have been my ADD.)
Lately, however, I’ve come more to the Great Man Myth way of thinking. It seems truer to me, in an Occam’s Razor kind of way. No need to add god’s hand or nebulous class struggles to the mix. Individuals struggle for power, yes, but only rarely do entire huge groups come into play.
Historical “myths” were also touched upon by British columnist George Monbiot, in his online essay God of the Soil. (http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/03/22/god-of-the-soil-/)
What happened between the time of Abraham and the time of Christ was that the nomads, having seized the fertile soils where the farmers dwelt, settled down. While they still looked back with longing upon the lives of their ancestors, their theology shifted to match their circumstances.
With this shift came something new: a belief in progress. The philosopher John Gray has pointed out that, while pagans typically see history as a cyclical process, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all claim to be working towards a denouement: “salvation is the culmination of history”.(11) The followers of these religions see life not as an endless cycle of hubris and nemesis, but as a journey towards a moment of transformation.
To me, this partly explains a lot of the end-of-the-world theology running around. If you view history through the Progress Myth – well, there’s got to be a “The End” sometime. A more pagan, cyclical view of history has no end – many “primitive” cultures postulated they were in the midst of one of several gigantic cycles of time. The Great Man Myth has neither precise cycles nor an “endable” storyline – it’s more the meandering path of a butterfly.
My questions to you are: which myths were you taught? Which inform your view of history today? Are there any others you can name?