It is a sad truth that many people consider history to be dull and boring. It is true that there are a great many dull and boring history texts in existence (especially those which eschew narrativity and focus on the supposed deep factors of history in rather dull ways), but history when told well has a rich vein of narrativity that, far from being boring, is highly inspiring and exciting. There is a deeper significance to the worth of the narrative historical approach, and I would like to explore it in at least a little bit of depth today.

The most appreciated historical accounts, at least by the general public, are those histories that preserve a narrative flow. Whether we are talking about Gibbon’s “Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire,” or Shelby Foote’s “The Civil War: A Narrative,” or Shirer’s “Rise And Fall of The Third Reich,” all of them excellent history works, the real gripping aspect of their history is the story. After all, history is a story about the past, or how we came to get to this point. There are no neutral stories, but rather a host of narratives that depend on different worldviews and perspectives and interpretive approaches. All too often historians, especially in the last 150 years, have shied away from the narrative aspects because they wanted to be seen as scientists and not storytellers, but history is essentially a story, and so the best of historians have embraced the storytelling and have sought to tell stories that are both compelling and honest, true to life and true to facts and evidence.

It is a well known insight that the difference between history and current events is that current events are all complicated and impossible to distinguish the epiphenomena from the real and lasting ones. Barring some sort of prophetic gift, it is difficult to distinguish between the superficial and the deep when it comes to momentous trends and epoch-shattering incidents. On the other hand, in the hands of many people history is highly deterministic, leading people to think that the past could only have been a certain way and that there were no other options, or stewing over conspiracies and stabs in the back that denied them from a “rightful” victory.

In reality, current events presents us with a variety of options, which are then determined by the actions (and inactions) of those who were alive, turning a lot of potentialities into a few chosen paths, which then work out their consequences on life. Now, this is not to deny an overall architect to history, only to say that we have agency and free will in our own choices, and also some limitations on our action due to environmental pressures (including logistics, finances, resources, and the like). We are free, but constrained, and can neither reject our freedom and responsibility for doing the best given our circumstances, nor deny the constraints that we are under, nor feel that our lives and fates are determined by those constraints rather than simply influenced by them.

There is a deeper understanding in this, though, that we may neglect to ponder about. The relationship between history and current events is the same relationship between youth and old age. The young have lives that are full of potential. There are many options open to them, depending on the choices they (and others) take and the opportunities they recognize and seize. Like those engaged in examining current events, the young do not know what is important and what is ephemeral. A popular band or cultural fad seems just as relevant and important (if not more so) to deeper but less superficial patterns of historical and cultural change. People can get caught up in the crowd and not recognize the seriousness of decisions made in a passionate hurry, whether in our personal lives or the historical process as seen in our communities and societies.

On the other hand, the longer we live the more our potentials become choices that have consequences. What was once possibility becomes actuality, whether good or bad or (more often) mixed. We gain wisdom as a result of our sufferings and experiences, and we look back trying to gain insights from our own experiences that we can then pass along to others so that they do not need to suffer as we have. And that is precisely the nature of the historical approach. It is an attempt to gain wisdom and insight from the suffering and experiences of mankind so that we do not have to endlessly make the same mistakes over and over again, but can rather learn from what has come before and apply that knowledge to our own times and situations in the hope of making better decisions this time than we would have made without such knowledge and understanding.

And that is the worth and the purpose of studying history. We seek to gain insight from the experiences of humanity in the past so that we can gain wisdom without having to personally suffer. We seek to have enough insight while we are still young and in the present, able to make choices for a better future. History, even if it cannot predict the future, gives us information that gives us an advantage in choosing wisely, even if it makes no guarantees of perfection. By gaining wisdom and insight while we are young or before we have made serious errors, we are therefore able to live better lives in the future.

But it is a shame that this understanding of history appears rare. All too often we merely understand the past to feel better about ourselves, or to nurse old historical wounds, rather than to gain insight to learn from mistakes and move on. When we use the knowledge of the past (even though it is incomplete and biased) to give us some insight about the workings of the patterns of human behavior, we gain an advantage over those without such knowledge, which allows us to (potentially) make better decisions, avoid unnecessary suffering, and prevail in historical conflicts so that we can then pass on our insights to others after us, so that they can benefit from the insights we have learned, passing along that hard earned knowledge to others generation after generation. That’s the goal, at least.