ToK Unit - History

            According to Boorstin, historians can only know what occurred in the past through historical relics. Boorstin believes that the most significant, knowledgeable, valuable, and less-used artifacts are the historical relics that remain from the past. For example, according to Boorstin’s article, the survival of artifacts are based on their proximity to controversies or how much knowledge survives and accumulates and ignorance disperses. Therefore, the more cultural value a relic, artifact or object has, the longer it’ll survive and the more useful it’ll become. In class we watched a Star Trek episode about implanting memories that belonged to someone else so that future generations may never commit or suffer the genocide of a people. The crew of the ship in the episode all experienced the memory of committing a mass murder of innocent civilians, of feeling disgust, guilt, shame and desperation over their supposed actions. What they discovered, however, was that a historical monument (a synaptic transmitter) passed all those memories to any visitor of the planet. In the end of the episode, the crew of the ship decides not to take down the monument as it is of historical importance to those people who created it. The attitude the characters of the episode held towards that monument is similar to Boorstin’s ideas of historical knowledge. The knowledge of this mass murder replaces people’s ignorance of its existence. Where someone would otherwise not know what happened, everyone now knows. The crew were desperately suffering panic attacks and reliving these memories that weren’t theirs, which is controversial. But the fact is, the monument remains because of its controversial nature. If it didn’t surround such a horrifying event and didn’t have the power it did, it wouldn’t have survived, much less made history. Like we learned in History, a primary document such as this one both conveys the controversial topic very accurately but also presents knowledge to be maintained, all the while being biased. And even though this particular source was biased, you can’t deny that it happened as a lot of Emotion, Perception, and Reason were put into it.

            A real life example is the innumerous memorials, tributes and museums around the world dedicated to the Holocaust. In these museums, interviews with survivors, historical facts, pictures, videos, artifacts, objects, clothes, etc. are displayed so that visitors can get a taste of what it felt like to go through that genocide. The stronger the presence of a historical fact, the more diminished ignorance about it becomes. Just like Boorstin says, “Knowledge Survives and Accumulates, but Ignorance Disappears”. Also, if it weren’t for the controversial nature of Hitler’s actions and intentions, this genocide would most likely be a minor chapter of our world’s history. The fact that 6 million Jews were killed along with homosexuals, gypsies, and any other subcategories of society makes it controversial. How can one man wish for a superior race? How could people follow him so willingly? How can someone murder people everyday and be fine with it? Both sides of the story, the attackers and victims are what perpetuate the survival of this history. 

            Ideas like this are what make Emotion as a Way of Knowing so important to understand and teach. Because of emotions tied to certain historical events, some survive longer and more accurately than others. We have to understand that when viewing historical facts, we have our own emotions and we have the experiencer’s emotions to process. We perceive everything around us through our emotions. We know when to be sad, angry, or happy something happened. We know when to respect, challenge or accept facts. But knowing that we always need to comprehend and investigate both sides’ connections and emotions to a story, how can Boorstin claim that there is a “Success Bias” in the survival of history? Through the Star Trek episode and through Holocaust memorials we see how history can and has maintained both the victorious and the loosing sides. Usually when a historical fact is presented through one sides’ lens, there is too much bias to really trust the source. Therefore, while historical evidence survives because of knowledge it spurs, its survival is not always due to the victorious, controversial, or unfortunate circumstances in which it was formed. History is more complex than just winning or loosing, it’s a network of Emotions, biases, subjectivity, knowledge, and ignorance.