A pessimistic approach to history?

This is a mixed post. There is a lot going on here, but not things I’m ready to blog about in detail. I’ve submitted for some grants, L has interviews that are going well, and we will soon know what our options are. Let’s just said in some versions life will continue much as normal, and in others I’m looking at major changes that could result in much more frequently blogging and cooking experiments. A teaser, I know, but you’ll get the full story later.

For the moment I’ve been in a situation this quarter that has really made me interrogate what I do and why I do what I do. This is the basic question of why study history and even if I can’t articulate that, I can articulate one thing: I don’t study history to tell heroic stories, to find role models, to highlight the best parts of humanity in dark times. This is probably why my hackles raise whenever students (professors) want to talk about resistance in the Holocaust as a way to find meaning and bright lights in dark moments. I want to study the dark moments. I want to know, to understand the worst parts of humanity because at base I think that Hobbes is right: we are all nasty brutish creatures who are only humanized by the social structures we create (which is pretty scary when you see how many of our social structures – religion, governments, families – are designed to perpetuate inequality and oppression). In fact, it’s that basic pessimistic view of humanity that makes me so nervous – I don’t think we’re good people with a few bad apples; I think were bad apples. Or maybe, neutral apples. Getting away from apples, I agree with one of my colleagues comments that “human beings always take the path of least resistance” combined with the belief that humans (reinforced in our day and age by capitalism) will always work to promote their own self-interest over that of another (maybe biologically linked to our survival?). I take very serious issue with teaching history out of love for an object/place/person, that does not adequate weigh the light and the dark. Not passion, not drive, but love of a subject that blinds us to the whole picture. Maybe this is why I like the dark moments, you can’t fall in love with them. You are forced to see the horrible things humans do to on another, how they get accustomed to doing it, why the might enjoy doing it, and in the instances, where appropriate, of those who are willing to think outside of themselves and help other for the “better of humanity” (which, of course always depends on what “humanity” we’re talking about – but I guess here assuming a truly universal notion of universalism, humanism, and reason from the Enlightenment, with a heavy dose of ethical liberal socialism).

And can you consider yourself to be a historian if you can’t deal with the “bad”? Wouldn’t it be a little like being a doctor who is unwilling to examine a patient’s legs b/c the feet freak them out?

Ultimately this all underlies my approach to history, which is one in which I see history as an experiment that can’t be repeated, or a “case study” of how human beings responded to certain stimuli given certain social, economic, political, conditions. I know I’ve blogged about this before, and most of you don’t care, but I’m in a situation in which I can’t confront what I see to be a problematic approach to my field of study, and I need some sort of outlet for it.