Looking at past can provide view into future

Tuesday, April 2, 1996

Beyond names and dates, history gives lessons on humanity

One cold winter’s night not so very long ago, I found myself
alone in a local bar, waiting for a few friends to arrive. To pass
the time, I began to jot down some notes for a history paper I was
writing when an elderly man with sad, colorless eyes and a flabby,
stubble-covered face sidled up next to me. "What are you doing?" he
inquired quietly. I wasn’t in the mood for small talk, but I didn’t
want to be rude either, so I answered, "Studying."

"What?" he asked.

"History," I said.

"Why?" he fired back.

"Good question," I said, for lack of a better answer, and we
shared a short moment of mirthless laughter. And that was it. My
friends arrived and the inquisitive old man disappeared from my
life as swiftly and unceremoniously as he had entered it.

But his question haunts me still: Why study history? Since I am
working toward my Ph.D. in history, it seems that I spend most of
my waking hours either reading, writing or studying history.
Without even knowing it, that man gave voice to a question that has
lingered malignantly in the back of my mind for the past
two-and-a-half years.

Why am I doing this? Why am I studying history when I could be
out in the world trying to make history? I know, Oscar Wilde once
said, "Anybody can make history; only great men can write it." But
that doesn’t help me now. I don’t need maxims; I need answers.

So, then, what’s the reason? Maybe we study history simply
because it’s fun. Because it gives us a chance to travel back to
another place and time and meet individuals totally unlike
ourselves. Or maybe we study history because it gives perspective:
Like literature and the arts, history lends enrichment to the life
of the mind.

Sounds good. But there must be more to it than that. Surely the
justification for history cannot rest solely on a personal level.
There must be some sort of positive social value or utility
attached to such a grand and long-lasting enterprise. Well, then,
maybe history is a way in which we gain an understanding of how
­ as a culture, as a society and as a people ­ we have
arrived at the position we are at today. History not only shows us
where we’ve been, but it gives us a sense of where we might be
heading.

Imagine, if you can, what it would be like to wake up one
morning and know nothing about your past: nothing about where
you’re from, nothing about your relatives, nothing at all about the
details of your life. Imagine how lost and disoriented and
directionless you would feel. Well, what holds true for the
individual holds true for society as well.

The society that does not know where it has been, what it has
done, what it values and what it has accomplished and endured is
hopeless, lost ­ as aimless as a rudderless, compassless ship
drifting on a vast and indifferent sea. Without the past to guide
us, it is difficult to imagine ­ let alone navigate ­ the
future.

To take it one step further, imagine what it would be like to
live in a society in which no one cared, or dared to care, whether
powerful and influential groups could fabricate false narratives of
the past ­ and protect those narratives from critical
examination by obliterating, sealing or tampering with the evidence
by which the past might be reconstructed. "This is not a
preposterous question," one history professor recently told me. For
after all, he said, "Totalitarian regimes usually kill the
historians first." Grave words indeed for a budding historian.

But still, there must be more. There must be a deeper
philosophical dimension to the question of history. And so there
is. In a remarkable series of lectures given in 1926 and recently
published in the new edition of "The Idea of History," the English
historian-philosopher R.G. Collingwood posited that there are three
reasons why we study history: to know what it means to be human; to
know what it means to be human living in a particular place and
time; and to know what it means to be a human different from all
other humans. Bull’s eye!

Collingwood, it seems, has hit the nail squarely on its head!
With this short definition, Collingwood has tied together in one
neat and tidy package the philosophical, the social and the
personal.

Philosophically, history teaches us what it means to be human.
Socially, history teaches us what it means to be human in a given
situation. And personally, history teaches us what it means to be a
unique human, wholly separate and distinct from all other human
beings.

Which brings us back to the beginning, in a way: We study
history because it is fun and engaging, challenging and revealing,
not only on a personal level, but on a larger social and
philosophical level as well.

At last an answer I can live with! Now I can return to my
studies with a renewed sense of vigor and purpose. But there is one
more thing I’d like to say. For those of you who claim not to like
history, my response is this: Give it another chance. Take a risk.
Take a history class. There are over 100 courses to choose from,
and the professors at UCLA are some of the most highly respected
historians in the nation.

And don’t worry about all of the dates and details, you can
always look those up later. Focus instead on the people and the
places, on the stories and the ideas. Because, in the end, that’s
what truly matters. That’s where you’ll find the heart and soul of
history. So go for it! Take a history class. The risks are minimal
(three hours per week), but the rewards can last you a
lifetime.

Oh, and by the way, if you happen to see a lonely old man with
dim, colorless eyes and a flabby, stubble-covered face sitting in a
bar, trying to wrestle up conversation with some unsuspecting
patron, let me know. I have something I want to tell him.

Evans is a UCLA alumna, class of 1989, who works in the history
department. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.