Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

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The dark ages are a myth. This is becoming more accepted amongst historians. It's an artifact of our imaginations, not a valid narrative. Athens and Rome are only two of countless agrarian kingdoms / empires of the day. When Rome fell, the rest of Europe mostly just went on without imperial control. More wars were fought but warfare of the day was exceedingly resource-constrained and not like the total wars we see today. Kingdoms and empires rose and fall all the time, we just focus on those two because their culture survived while the other ones' didn't.

The terminology "dark ages" more refers to the loss of Christian leadership than it does of technological or economic loss. Christians love to frame things apocalyptically and that's what's responsible for the common pejorative view of that time period.

A more valid comparison would be the Napoleanic wars, but there too, you can see that really the wars were only possible because economic advancement allowed nations much more resources to devote to war. Europe had to learn how to civilize warfare three times. Each time happened after massive economic advancements.

Interesting, but it seems you're coming from the position of having already concluded what the answer is, and then going back and fitting everything to that precondition.

Reassessing historical narratives you grew up with has that effect. I'm coming to find out that nothing is as it was taught. The information you gain today should be prioritized over the information you learned yesterday, just because it comes from a better and more informed perspective.

I've been spending lots of time on Quora, I eventually learned that not a single way of thinking about events I had when I was younger was anywhere close to truth. Ignorance is the norm rather than the exception. You have to reify past events to fit current conclusions because you have no past understanding of those events that's reliable.

I'd call it "post-history" but if anything history is more important.

Definitely, but that doesn't change the simple logic that if you have a conclusion, it's very easy to lose the truth of a historical situation by instead selecting an explanation that you want.

Let's say there is a historical event, and you know of 3 different possible explanations. Explanation 1 is what you learned as a child and it's clearly wrong now because of new evidence. Explanation 2 and 3 both fit all known facts and either one could be correct -- but only explanation 2 fits with your conclusion that the world is always heading towards liberalism (or conservatism or whatever you believe).

Do you pick explanation 2? Human nature says you do, and it's something we need to be aware of.

> You have to reify past events to fit current conclusions because you have no past understanding of those events that's reliable.

Do you really have to?

> Do you really have to?

Think about it. You have an understanding of history. You can't not have an understanding of history, unless you live under a rock. As you study history more and more, you realize that all of your prior understandings of history are wrong.

What do you do then? You don't have a past anymore. The only thing that's making sense is the present. So you re-examine the past in light of the present. That's reifying. It's your only option. You're reifying today, you're going to reify again tomorrow. Because the thing doing the understanding is changing every day, so you need new understandings. You're not building, you're constantly demolishing.

Logic is only as good as your premises. If your premises can't be trusted, you need to go back to the drawing board.

Following that line, what use is history at all anymore? It's now just a hammer we can use to propagate whatever new idea we currently have. I don't really see the value in such a history.

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