It may come as a surprise when I tell you that I am an avid reader. I gain a whole lot of inspiration from books, and my book collection has now overrun my bookshelf space. I download Kindle books when printed options aren’t available, but I find printed books to be my favorite method of reading. With that said, one of the largest genres in my collection is history. History is a very big genre because it encompasses everything that happened before right now. That means we will always have things to capture, record, and study in future generations. HISTORY AT A GLANCE We get a general historic overview, just hitting the wavetops, by learning dates of major wars, inventions, important names and events in school. This is quite broad, but this is where we can watch how wars, inventions, and movements build and/or destroyed nations. This is a great way to get ‘primed’ on history, and can even be necessary to give an introduction and set the stage for a more specific part of history. Patterns start to show themselves, and we start getting a picture of how we have evolved as humans. Some of this evolution has been good, and some bad. Some took a long time to come around while some things literally happened in a matter of days. I like to call this: History from 50,000 Feet. EVENTS AND TIMELINES To get more into the weeds, you can study specific events or periods of time. For example, the period 1775-1784 is the generally agreed-upon period of time that the American Revolutionary War took place. The timeline of study will change if you want to see what started the war and the aftermath it had on the world. The timeline can also get much shorter if you are trying to narrow down certain parts of the war, such as when Colonial Army/Militia went on the offensive, starting with The Battle of Trenton. CULTURAL STUDY There are more ways, besides timelines and eras, that we can study and learn from history. We can study entire cultures such as the Ancient Romans and see why their culture became so dominant throughout the world, but also why and how it faded away. We can learn a lot about humans as a race by studying cultural development patterns. We see our good and bad sides exposed. Cultural and racial genocide, religious crusades and jihads, ritual suicide to preserve family honor, disease that wiped out whole towns, subjugation of the lower classes, slavery of a conquered people, political corruption, inherited poverty and social status, internal conflict and civil war, etc. These are blemishes that have marked every culture in one way or another. In many ways, you will see that we are in one big cycle of culture. We reach a peek of societal class and mutual respect, only to destroy it all for the sake of political correctness and “Equality”. You know…the crap that caused Rome to die off. HISTORICAL USE OF VIOLENCE Despite how society currently wants us to avoid conflict, our entire existence was only capable because of violence. Slavery and States rights to self-govern was a topic that ignited the Civil War. Governments in an elaborate alliance network with other Governments was the cause of WW1. American ships being sunk by German U-Boats initiated the commitment of America into the First World War. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor enraged America, who was playing Ostrich, into fully contributing to WW2. I don’t even want to imagine what the world would look like today if these acts of violence had not been committed in our past. Seriously, consider the sacrifices made in war, and consider the cost of not going to war. Not all wars solve a cultural issue but instead are events started and finished due to political influence, such as Afghanistan and Vietnam. Regardless of whether we agree with the cause or not, conflicts and wars that we participated in can still provide valuable lessons for the future. Think policy scrutiny for future political candidates or even tactical and strategic lessons to save lives in future conflicts/wars. PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES The best way I have found to get a real appreciation of history is to look at it through someone’s eyes. This would be from diaries, journals, letters home, or historical accounts in post-event publications, which is very popular in our current times (Personal accounts of serving in the Global War On Terror). This is what I call studying perspectives. Each person has an opinion based on how they are affected (hurt or unscathed), their upbringing (coddled or toughened), their personality (passive, resilient, alpha, etc.), and even their current position in society (Poverty, Middle Class, Royalty/Politician). One person may have viewed the rationing of World War 2 in Britain as being highly tragic and tyrannical while another person may have seen it as merely an inconvenience. Personal perspectives can also provide a good set of lessons for us in our own lives. It is not hard to draw inspiration to “suck it up” as those who had gone before me had to when they were enduring real starvation or losing friends and family from war. Personal perspective can teach you not only history, but about being human and the amazing resilience we have against hardship. WIDE SCOPE OF SUBJECTS There are so many things that happened throughout history that it would be almost impossible to understand and know EVERYTHING that happened. We are just not on this Earth long enough. For this reason, we are better off thinking of subjects that inspire us. For myself, though I like history in general, I like studying Roman history and different wars, if you couldn’t tell. I enjoy learning about tactics, strategy, technological influences, and how we as humans were/are trained and indoctrinated into the savage subject of fighting on behalf of the country. I expand my research to include other national militaries and past conflicts to get a wider idea of how we have and will continue to fight against our fellow man. This kind of subject is still very diverse and requires me to learn a lot of different cultural things. I have found that there is more to how we fight than just the technology we have or how each nation attacks a prepared defensive position. Psychology, sociology, and science all come into play with this subject, so it keeps me pretty busy. MYTHS AND PROPAGANDA As a student of history, I have found that not all history is written equally. Some things, such as the Spartans being a warrior culture, is the biggest and longest running propaganda campaign in existence. If you look at the specific history of Sparta, you will see that there is zero account or precedent for the conclusion that they lived for war. All those claims of them being a warrior culture came hundreds of years later and stemmed from the rare and never repeated event at Thermopylae (A lie that was based on a grain of truth). That battle was what Sparta used to guilt other Greeks into action and to convince other Greeks that they were the best choice of commanding the united Greek resistance against the Persian invasion. They wanted to lead the united Greek army and receive the customary glory and credit given to leaders in war. Thermopylae was also the event they desperately needed in order to bolster their image, much as men do when they embellish a story. Rumors of bravery turned into rumors of lifelong warriors, which further turned into rumors of the Spartan warrior nation. Gotta love the rumor mill. Also, the pre-Thermopylae Agoge was observed as being no different than the one conducted in Athens. There were no training camps or years of harsh militarized drills. It was only after Thermopylae that Sparta started making their Agoge more brutal, just to physically live up to what they had claimed. Funny enough, their Agoge still didn't have any real military training involved except a brief study on military order and wartime functions and formations. The results of the new Agoge was worse and worse Spartan citizens. In fact, if the war with Athens is any indication, Athens was more of a warrior culture than Sparta, even after their Agoge changes. If Spartans were so warlike, why did they surrender to the Athenians and then come back to Sparta with honor? That doesn't sound like the Spartans described in history books. I am going to fill you in on why we haven't heard much about the truth of Sparta until now. Since the Nazis idolized the Spartans, the Europeans associated the two, and research on the ancient Spartans atrophied for decades. Time seems to have healed those wounds and recent archeological technology and research have been able to resume and tell us more. The funny thing is that most of the evidence that shows Sparta was NOT a military-based culture was already known before WW2, but scholars back then had so much pride in their conclusions that new evidence was always dismissed to preserve ones prestige. Ah, the good old days of sabotaging truth to preserve prestige. History can be educational and can turn your beliefs upside down. Sorry, but since I used to be a victim of this propaganda and most still are, it is my favorite example. REVISIONIST HISTORY In many modern texts and most google searches, you are seeing the bastardization (If not the complete omission) of history. You will often hear it called “revisionist” history. This is where women/minorities are given credit for historical events they were not involved in, such as women being star Gladiators in the Roman Arenas or a woman and black man being solely responsible for designing the Space Shuttle. Not to say that minorities and women haven’t had terrific contributions in history and our development as a nation. We know for a fact that women fought in the Civil War disguised as men, and the Montford Point Marines made huge contributions in desegregating our fighting forces. And don’t believe for a second that the pendulum doesn’t swing both ways. There are some sources that say Black Regiments never “actually fought” in the Civil War, despite physical evidence, eye witness testimony, etc. In both ways, history is being rewritten to fit political or ideological narratives. This is no different than how NASA destroyed thousands of acres of Florida wildlife in order to put up a solar panel farm. Destroy nature so you can virtue signal with your solar panels that you are preserving and saving nature. FACTS ARE UNDER ATTACK My concern as a student of history is that the FACTS are being diluted down so bad that we are literally watching the development of our own Spartan myth. Certain parts of our own history are completely omitted from text for being “offensive” while other parts of history are being embellished or just made up entirely. Rome would burn any literature that did not fall in line with “Roman Truth”, to the point of burning historical documents and executing scribes. There is a little history you don’t learn in school. We are very close to being in the same league as Rome in that sense, and therefore we are following a very common human cycle. THE BURDEN OF TRUTH Unfortunately, we have to be very cautious about what we read, and even look with a critical eye on certain things like cultural standards of the time in order to detect B.S. revisions of history. This means that you must be MORE educated in order to study history. One way to bypass most of the revisionist history is to study through older texts. According to some sources, any book published after 1990 may contain revisionist history. This does not mean that ALL literature today is bad. You can develop ways to filter through B.S. by investigating the author(s) and specifically where they studied for their history degree (Hint: California is pretty much universally accepted as a land of revisionist indoctrination), looking at different sources to back up or refute certain points, etc. There are many safeguards I use to actually learn history and not get spun up in the revisionist propaganda being injected into modern public schools. I dare say that you almost have to question the validity and truth of all the history texts being published today. As a history buff, I want raw facts, not coddled politically correct narratives. This is not to discredit all scholars publishing works today. However, I would be very diligent about who you are taking your information from, and then sniff out and verify any claims made when it doesn't seem right. There are indeed some scholars out there, such as the ones taking a closer look at Spartan history, who have honestly researched and explored their topic for the raw truth. CLOSING Despite the sour subject of revisionist history and the like, I feel that history is a subject we can all learn from. It can give us a respect for certain conveniences we currently take advantage of, but also point out the fact that we are not as advanced as we think we are. History gives us real perspective, just as much as physics and chemistry. Being knowledgeable about where we came from can give us a better ability to anticipate where we are going. Don’t take that for granted.
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