As a kid in school, I had this unabashed hatred for the subject of History. The way they flooded you with names of dead people, the way you had to memorize a litany of dates and eras, and the way everything in history had either unimaginative or tedious names like: the middle ages, or Spanish colonialism, or the agricultural revolution. I mean, in what world would a kid that grew up with action figures and video games be interested in people from thousands of years ago planting seeds in the ground? So I was as surprised as anyone when I turned out to be such a self-confessed history enthusiast. I imagine if I could talk to my younger self, I’d tell him that there is so much more to the subject than just dates, facts and names.
You see, as it turns out, there are actually two kinds of history. One is the tedium and monotony of history where you have to memorize names and dates and events. It’s knowing the “What, who, when, where”. But also as essential is the other kind of history; the action and drama of knowing the “How” and the “why” of events. This is where you get to explore how things work, why things are the way they are, how groups of people interacted, and how different beliefs influenced their actions, all that exciting and interesting stuff. But the catch is, before you even get a whiff of trying to explain the hows and whys, you need to first go through the what, where and whens. You don’t get to do the exciting job of trying to figure out how stuff works, unless you first find out how they came to be. It would be impossible, for example, to understand how Korea works today, without knowing about the Korean War. Impossible, to form a fully informed and well-balanced opinion on the state of Philippine-American relations without knowing about the Second World War, or the Spanish-American War. You can read one history book that focuses on the facts and figures, and a totally different history book that focuses on trying to explain its relevance and impact, but to only focus on one and disregard the other would be a grave disservice to the purpose of the entire field of study.
I could sit and argue that the reason why I hated history as a child, was because of the poor state of the Philippine education system, focusing so heavily on the boring stuff and glancing over the more interesting stuff. But even that would be a gross oversimplification. In reality, I’ve come to realize that, the facts-and-figures history is simply the more enduring of the two kinds. Crudely put, one history presents the facts, while the other presents only a historian’s attempt at explaining the, or drawing a conclusion from, the facts – an attempt that carries with it all the biases and prejudices of their time. And if one thing is for certain, it is that biases and moral views have the tendency to change, while hard facts and data have the tendency to stand the test of time. Historian Mary Beard prefaced her book on the Roman Empire with the caution “It is a dangerous myth [to think] that we are better historians than our predecessors. We are not. [The only difference is that] we come to Roman history with different priorities. [We simply] put new questions onto old facts and make ancient past speak to us in a new idiom.”
The point is, it might pay to learn from history (Yes, both of them). Where opinions, no matter how gripping, no matter how exciting or fulfilling, are merely attempts to answer the hows and whys of past events. They hold neither truth nor relevance, without the boredom known as facts; substantiated, verifiable, and undeniable facts.
