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发表于 2008-8-24 15:20:38
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issue48
The study of history places too much emphasis on individuals. The most significant events and trends in history were made possible not by the famous few, but by groups of people whose identities have long been forgotten.
What is the purpose of the study of history? The answers might various from person to person. However, I assume that the main reason we are fascinated in the history is the desire to know and learn from the truth of the past so that we can perform properly in the future. And the purpose decides the way we study and handle the history. The continuous status of the emphasis put on individuals during historical study should probably meet the practical needs. And there might be three factors that determine the status.
first is that the individuals in the history are easy to learn from. Through the study of the individuals, we might find out the social and economical back grounds, the personal experiences, the education level, the values that were treasured of the winner as well as the loser. People read those biographies and follow the steps those great persons had ever started with and prevent the mistakes leading to failures. Therefore, from this sense, there is no reason for people to have interest on the insignificant ones.
The second one is that most biographers and historians were paid or attracted by the successes. In all ages, hitorical vitories,which were the major part of the history, weren't ever been recorded without names, which requiring not only their descendants but also enemies to take into memories. And the ordinaries didn't have any chances to be recorded or mentioned, they were just considered as the same, one of the mass.
Thirdly, as the energy of the historians is limited, only few in the history can be actually studied and analyzed carefully, and there are always a great rest of people are omitted and forgotten. Considering the readers, they have no such persistent attention on the every individuals of the past. Moreover, there is few material of the insignificant people left to be studied, Which limited the scope of the history studies.
Moreover, although there is possibility that the impact of a group of people in a certain time is much heavier than the known individuals, they are just mass without individualities. It might be true that a historical event happened because of the insist of a thousand of people on one aim, but we'd better find out the leader of the event, as it was him that actuate the event. Despite the limited effect single persons can exert, without him, those were just one thousand people just like any other thousands.
However, the activities that the history studies put much emphasis on the individuals do have evil impact on the concepts of people today. Reader might perceive as that ordinaries are useless or being ordinaries is regarded as uesless.Apart from the hard work to be famous, some might adopt extreme ways to be noticed or famous , just want to be kept in the history. |
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