When I was a child I had a vague notion of history. I remember trying to comprehend it.  History looked like an expanse of stained and yellowing paper with a dark timeline running through the middle of it. Cars were invented sometime in the past…sometime after knights fought for kings but probably before the TV was invented. The Revolutionary War was just before the Civil War because thats how we learned it in school–not much happened between so the times became condensed in my mind. And surely it was a long long time ago that people didn’t have light bulbs, air conditioning, toilets (seriously, how did people live without toilets!), and cars. I mean, at least they had trains for a long time before cars. And telephones too.  All of this was in some grand past long dead and incomprehensible. Just a timeline.

Some quick facts. It is 2010. The personal computer did not exist thirty years ago. Schools were still segregated 50 years ago. World War 2 was some 70 years ago. The great depression was some 80 years ago, and World War 1 was about 90 years ago. Slavery existed 150 years ago.

The lightbulb was invented in 1880. Before that everyone used candles and after that it took many many years for lights to become widespread.  That was130 years ago.  Think about that for a moment. The lightbulb changed the character of our existence forever. We could go to sleep any time. We could work at night, live at night. Before, darkness was impenetrable except for our feeble attempts with fire and our prayers to the stars and moon that they would shine brighter and light our way. Now we live by the lights we have artificially created.

Right around the same time, 1885, the first widely recognized internal combustion engine was built. Again, only 125 years ago. Before that you hardly could leave you town. When you did you had to travel long distances slowly or expensively. You had to get on a horse or ride in a carriage or walk. Your neighbors were the people you knew because you couldn’t know anyone else. Think of how much time we spend in cars. Think of the places we go, with such speed and consistency. Take all that away. Only a 125 years ago. Two average lifespans. And of course automobiles weren’t even common until after Ford, in the 1900s, and didn’t become a real part of every day life until even later. Yes, we had trains before but they were still quite different. And this is saying nothing of airplanes, which allow us to travel across the world in hours instead of months or even years.

Should I speak also of telephones and the fact that before we could only talk to people whom we had traveled long distances (quite slowly) to see or had carefully written to? I won’t even mention computers. Or the thousands of other integral technologies in our lives that we don’t really notice but which readily shape our lives. Polyester. Plastic. Air conditioning. And so on.

The industrial revolution occurred around the late 1700s, with the invention of the cotton gin, steam engine, and the use of iron. It really picked up steam (no pun intended) around the 1850s. 160 years ago. How long is that for a world to completely change character? In such a sense as it has…such an extreme sense. Its incomprehensible. Life as those people knew it is gone, perhaps forever. We either find ourselves entirely unable to comprehend such an existence or completely aghast at the thought of it.

Such a short time and such change. The whole nature of our experience stands altered by what we have created.

This is, again, the sort of thing I seek to study in my life–the way that the life we have created for ourselves frames and shapes the nature of our existence. Trying to comprehend the existence of pre-1850s in nearly impossible. I was fascinated tonight by Pride and Prejudice for that reason alone, nevermind the fact that its a Jane Austen romance. The world of then is not the world of now and a mere 150 years (200 in the case of Austen) separates us from that existence. How things have changed. How all of life has changed! What is this existence that we are living now!? How absurd and how fascinating!

It is easy to lose perspective of history. When life undergoes significant changes, such as we’ve been going through over the past fifty years it is easy to forget the world that we knew (or in us youngin’s case, never knew) just a generation ago.  The world that my parents grew up in is not the same world they came to rule even if it was this is the world they created.

People of my generation don’t even seem to really realize that segregation still existed 50 years ago and that the computers of that time took up whole floors of buildings.

Computers–now that is the most enormously fascinating difference between now and then.  The changes brought about in our world by computers are so immense. They have brought about a whole new worldview; they have revolutionized the way we interact, work, and exist in the world. They have given us multiple identies, increased mobility, and connectivity beyond anything we ever imagined.

That being said…the physical structure of the world has not changed nearly as rapidly as the introduction and improvement of computers has.  The world we live in today is a digital world crammed into an archaic society that was built from a non-digital world. Much effort must be expended now just to adjust this world to a rapidly changing technological landscape.

How do you do that? Thats a good question, one I’d like to spend a good bit of time thinking about.

I was laying in bed after a fantastic nap this afternoon trying to think of ideas for pieces that could provide me the opportunity to go out and do research and the chance to create more charged and helpful pieces. Also, I was thinking I wanted to be a little more humble about all of this and really get down on my hands and knees, so-to-speak, and see if I could come up with something good.

Then these two ideas occurred to me.

1) A piece on the history of Rock Hill. I”ve lived there my whole life and hardly given the place two seconds of my time. I’ve always thought little of it and never particularly wanted to stick around. But now I’m started to get a peculiar sense of space, an understanding of how the place of one’s childhood influences and shapes ones existence. Before I have scorned this aspect, discarding Rock Hill, SC as a pitiful little suburb of the equally disdainful and dirty city of Charlotte.  Now I think it is time to humble myself a little. I think it’d be fun and interesting to see if I could dig up some history of that rapidly growing city and perhaps even do some quality research and interviews while I am at it.  Then if I do it well I can see if I can contact The Herald or Rock Hill Magazine (yes, there is one) to get them to publish a version of the piece, catered to whatever needs and interests they may have.  Now, I actually wouldn’t be surprised if people have written articles about this but I might be able to get some good material and it’d be some good practice.

If anyone has any info or suggestions about this project I’d like to know. Anyone good to interview, books or places to go for info, or the like, I’d appreciate the tip.  I might not start this project right away but rather do some planning first.  This could be my first good quality research piece and I look forward to digging around and seeing what I’ll find. It will also mean a few trips up to rock hill for this purpose, and I’m sure my family would appreciate it.

2) I was also thinking that it’d be cool to do something similar with Columbia, but have this one be more motivated by a sense of place and history. I already want to do an experiment piece where I walk every where I go for a week to see where that takes me. I’ll have to do that during the school year though. For now, however, I’d like to try to do something that requires research, something about the status of Columbia, SC in the expanse of its history. What is Columbia today in relation to its history? Columbia does not really hide its history but it is growing rapidly beyond the place it was before, becoming much more of a modern intermixed city.  It could be interesting to do some historical work here as well.  We’ll see what I can put together then I’ll see if I can get it put out anywhere–there are quite a few magazines and newspapers around here, and USC’s many magazines also appreciate this kind of stuff.

So yeah, we’ll see where these two ideas take me.  Both I think could be fantastic for getting out there and doing research and interviews and whatnot.  Two pieces like that could be really good for expanding my portfolio.

I don’t think most people realize just how much has gone on in the Middle East over the past 5000 years.  To speak for myself, the only history I ever got of the middle east was the limited and one-sided view of it I got through religion.  I think we may have covered a portion of it briefly in one of my high school classes, but nothing significant.

Yet, it doesn’t take much historical knowledge to realize just how important the area is. At least three major world religions have come from the area. It is considered a holy area for billions of people.  It has served for thousands of years as the crossroads for cultures and ideas. Even the Greeks and Romans, who we consider the core of Western ideals, were preserved, to a large extent, by the help of middle-eastern people. I may have this wrong, but I do believe that many of the works of Aristotle and others were preserved in a middle eastern language then translated back to Greek a couple hundred years later.

Now we speak of the Middle East with scorn like children who have left home and still resent their parents for whatever it is they imagine they did or did not do.   They’re still uncivilized, we say. Violent, religious, crude, oppressive. Like humans used to be, before.

But, in truth, the Middle East is the history of humanity. It is suffused with war, religious ideals, ethnic and group wars, oppressive discrimination, and a crude way of life. At least this is the impression we get of it, although I would guess that people there would suggest its further along than we think.

It makes me think that this area brings out the worst in people still.   When we talk of fighting this war, we speak about a ‘war against terror’ or whatever, when we should really be talking of a war against our own past, a fight against a lingering time of oppression, senseless religious zealotry, and bickering (enforced by killing).  But the problem is, one can’t just go modernize an area, especially one that contains such a rich history of conflict.  Growing up Mormon they used to tell us this: don’t be friends with a bad influence, thinking you can change them. Instead, they will end up changing you.  This has happened to us.   Our war in the Middle East has regressed the US back to the imperialism we almost moved past, back to a violence and ignorant cruelty that is reminiscient of years past.

In reality, though, the place is only recently coming around and we ought to give it a chance to develop into a modern society without us constantly tearing it to pieces. After all, it has been taken over dozens of times over the past 5000 years and has never been allowed to develop as much of an identity as most other places.  Just to illustrate the magnitude of this, check this out.  It is a brilliant illustration of just how many times this place has been torn to pieces. Here is the list of empires:
Kingdom of Egypt
Hittite Empire
Kingdom of Isreal
Assyrian Empire
Persian Empire
Macedonian Empire
Roman Empire
Byzantine Empire
Sassanid Empire
The Caliphate
Seljuk Empire
Crusader Kingdoms
Salidin’s Empire
Mongol Empire
Ottoman Empire
European Colonialism
Israel Founded, expands
That is a total 17 different groups taking over in the past 5000 years, all in the same area.  The earliest one to get its independence was Egypt in 1922 then the rest followed after, some of them not receiving independence until the 70s.

My thought is this: how can a place develop if it is constantly being torn to pieces?  Despite the areas rich history, one can’t modernize the area in terms of infrastructure and education if it’s constantly a war zone.   How can we expect these people to overcome their history of war (indeed, the horrible history of a brutal human society) if we continue the trend?

Any historian will tell you that the Spanish colonists had three main aims when they came pillaging and enslaving their way through the Americas: wealth, status, and souls.  This could be said of more than just the Spanish–you could easily suggest that most of the horrible atrocities (and lesser actions) ever taken in history have been because of those three ideas.  Of the three, however, souls is the one we use to justify our atrocities–and the Spanish were no different.  The natives were made out to be savages, lesser creatures to be saved from their brutal lives.  It was this view that was so often used to enslave, oppress, and condemn people throughout the centuries. Unfortunately, it is still everywhere in our society, exhibited by Jihadists and enthusiastic evangelicals alike. 

Where did this mentality come from?  In the history of the European world this has been one of the most unfortunate views to develop out of the middle ages.  As explained in Born in Blood in Fire, by John Chasteen, the crusade mentality was something that had been ingrained in the Spanish through centuries of religious struggling with various foriengn invadors.

Born in Blood and Fire, by John Chasteen

 ”In 711 Muslims from northern Africa, called Moors, began to cross [the straits separating the two continents], heading north and seized most of the peninsula from its Christian kings (whose predecessors generations earlier had taken it from the Romans, who, in turn, had seized it from the Carthaginians, and so on).”   Ironically, these Africans were more civilized in almost every respect than the current Spanish–they were better physicians, engineers, and farmers, knew more about history and learning (they were the ones to introduce Greek and Roman learning into the area), and had much more developed sciences and technologies.  How then did cultural and religious intolerance form?  

Unfortunately, as Chasteen states, “the peninsula’s (Iberia, where Spain is located) eight hundred years of multicultural experience dissolved in an intolerant drive for religious purity.”  This quest for purity seems to be a common theme among all divided and heterogenous societies–even one like America, where the drive for a pure “American ideal” and patriotism leads people to pursecution, oppression, and misunderstanding. In Iberia’s case, this task of reconquest led to the seemingly glorious task of  annexing new land and subjugating the infidel populations.  Not only did they claim new territories but they forced Christian ideals on the people as they went.  The same pattern was applied to the conquest of the Americas. According to Chasteen:

“When Queen Isabel of Castile decided to bankroll the explorations of Christopher Columbus in teh 1490s, she did so in hopes of enriching her kingdom, true enough….But we should not underestimate the religious mystique that also surrounded the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs. Isabel was above all a Catholic monarch. Centuries of reconquest had created a true crusading mentality in Iberia, and the monarchies used this fervor to justify their increasingly absolute power.

“…Overseas exploration also took on religious significance. The earlier Christian reconquest in Portugal allowed the Portuguese to extend their crusading activities into Africa ahead of Spain. As Portuguese ships edged down the coast of Africa during the 1400s, bringing back gold and slaves, they found religious justification in tales of a lost Christian kingodm that supposedly lay beyond the Sahara, waiting to be reunited with the rest of Christendom.”

Chasteen does not beat around the bush. He states clearly:

“Religious ideas became particularly influential at the level of formal rationalization. Whenever the invaders of America had to explain and justify their actions, they invoked religious goals for reasons no more sinister than the common human wish to present oneself in the best light.”

Painting of Diego de Landa burning Mayan books. Photo credit: kwalbolt

The list of atrocities behind such ideals could and does fill thousands of volumes of historical texts. One particularly striking example from early colonial history is the case of the Priest Diego de Landa, who spent almost his whole life trying to Christianize the natives in the Yucatan peninsula in the mid 1500s. When the natives continued their “idolotrous ways” he proceeded to conduct massive torture campaigns. It is estimated that about 4000 natives were tortured in the course of 3 months.  Just because these people were living the way they had always known to live, but it was viewed as somehow savage by an outsider. 

The reason I tell this story of Spanish religious crusading is because it says alot about a mentality that still exists throughout our society.  When someone sees another culture or society and sees a strange world with different customs, beliefs, and ways of living, we automatically assume that they are somehow lesser or somehow deprived. We tend to think that we need to save them from their poor, wretched plight.  This occurs still within religious proselyting but also occurs within cross cultural mixing.  Unfortunately, The United States is the most obvious society to accuse of this practice and mindset. In the name of certain ideals the US has spent the last fifty years intervening in foriegn affairs, repressing different ideas, and supporting all kinds of atrocities and persecution.  The whole of the Cold War consists of a list of one violent and repressive intervention after another–whether it is Guatemala, Iran, Vietnam, Korea, El Salvador, Cuba, Venezuela–the list goes on.   But even now the US has troops in foreign lands. And what is our justification? It is the same as has always been used: you hold up some ideal like “Freedom, Liberty, and Democracy!” and proceed to kill, torture, and oppress people rather indiscrimantely for it.  

This does not mean that the ideals themselves are bad ones, by any means. The problem is when one is so set on spreading a certain idea that you are willing to kill for it.   Yes, the Jihadist and Taliban are just as guilty as the US, but the war is still fed on both sides by same problem. In other words, we are no better than they.  In a world the resembles a clash of civilizations, in the sense of Samual P. Huntington, how does this still make sense? How can we hope to ever have peace when we continue to fight over ideals and cultures, looking upon the other sides as savages? Are we not past this?  The accusation goes equally to both sides, but particularly to America, where we are supposed to be the flagship of freedom, liberty, and the promotion of diversity and equality.  Surely we could go about this war in a way that didn’t resemble the same oppressive, imperialist methods that have plagued this world since the Europeans first ventured off their little continent? 

But the blame doesn’t just fit in a global context, but for individuals as well.  I cannot tell you how often I see this conquest, “saving souls” mindset in some of our best people as they try to help others.  The so-called Green Revolution (the one in the 50s, not the current one) was a push by individuals and organizations to “modernize” agriculture in what was viewed as decrepit and deprived countries. Only now do we realize, as millions of children are dying of starvation due to the monoculture we’ve created, that we grossly misunderstood these people’s needs and culture.  The lesson continues to repeat itself in these more mild forms as we crusade with our ideals, thinking we know what is best, trying to “free people from the chains which bind them” or something of that sort, with our glorious new ideas. 

Seeking for a better world is one thing. Thinking you know what that better world is, and trying to force that ideal on others regardless of their beliefs, circumstances, and desires, that is a path to atrocities, misunderstanding, and suffering.  Please, let’s learn our lesson from history and seek to improve the world with an eye to local needs and individual desires, allowing those people to direct their own change rather than us being so conceited as to think we can instill in them the “better path” or way of life. 

This article was written using information taken down from lectures delivered at the University of South Carolina under Gabrielle Kuenzli and Joseph November. However, they do not directly endose any of the views contained in this article.