Why You Love History

I find myself in an unhappily familiar place: having pushed a series of projects into the editorial pipeline, I’m uncertain what comes next—far less certain than ever that anything will. But as usual, I’m casting about, trying to latch onto an idea that will work. The following is the first in a series of posts in such an effort. Not expecting any feedback, but glad to get any. –Jim

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Thanks for coming. I plan to make this worth your while.

I realize there will be any number of distractions competing for your attention. Imperative ones like a need for food or sleep; discretionary ones like a pet or the lure of your phone; annoying ones like an unwelcome summons or a forgotten timer. Still, you’re choosing to read these words, and return to them despite such interruptions, and there are some very good reasons for that.

They may not be obvious. After all, as I’ve already indicated, you’re deeply immersed in the present tense. To the extent you’re not, it’s usually a matter of thinking about the future—things you have to do, things you want to do, considerations that suddenly come to mind. The past seems like the least pressing thing you can imagine.

And yet you’re drawn to it. Maybe there’s history you like to revisit because it seems reassuringly fixed, like a favorite movie or television episode that you love to rewatch, remembering new things (or catching arresting new details when you do). But there’s more to this urge beyond the not inconsiderable satisfaction of ritual. Though you lack particulars—that’s what you’re hoping to get, hoping to savor—you also sense that people who lived in other times and places may have struggled with comparable problems, and maybe thought or acted in ways that may be useful to consider despite the very obvious differences between you and them and then and now. Which helps you understand where you are on the map of time.

These (inter)personal clarifications or consolations are important. But a sense of history is perhaps even important for the collective functions it serves. Not only are you not alone, but you in fact belong to a web of communities. Those congeries in your mind’s eye can be variously defined, like membership in a faith or a race or a gender. This can be especially important when an experience of deprivation offers the balm of solidarity.

The imagined community here is of a different sort: that of a nation, which in the grand sweep of history is a relatively recent phenomenon. The one in question is that which we know as the United States of America, one of about 200 on the planet at the moment. It’s fairly typical in some respects, unique in others, just like all nations. But you and I have some attachment to it because it’s ours, like a parent or child to whom we’re tied in ways independent of conscious choice or rational calculation. Like such family relations, a national birthright can be complicated, painful, and lead some to reject such ties (to the extent that’s ever really possible). We who do not make those choices should try to understand and respect those who do.

We should also make some conscious effort to try and understand what the Romans called one’s patria: country or homeland. These are the preconditions for a nation—the geography, language, and customs that a group of people share—as well as those that survive its destruction. (For much of recent centuries, Jews and Shawnees may have lacked a nation, or belonged to different ones, but still had patria to which they pledged at least some measure of allegiance—indeed, divided allegiances are also very much a human condition.) As you’ll see, the conversation that follows begins well before there was a United States, and may retain some relevance when, inevitably, it ceases to exist.

These, then are some reasons why you’re here. Next time I’ll say a few words about why I am.