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Much thanks to my then undiscovered ADHD I spent my university years switching between ”categories” (it’s not exactly the same as majors/minors here in Denmark

Much thanks to my then undiscovered ADHD I spent my university years switching between ”categories” (it’s not exactly the same as majors/minors here in Denmark because everything on a bachelors was tailored for you up front), 7 times before I ended up with Computer Science (which was where I started). Two of those years was spent studying History, and the primary subject through everything was that sources matter. Because history is exactly as described here, influenced by its writer and the context in which it was written. Which is why history as far as academia is concerned tends to be much more “peer-decided” than anything. With good and bad side effects. But basically a lot of history is a group of experts spending their careers discussing whether or not a set of pottery inscriptions can mean that Denmark went on a crusade or not. But that is academia, and though my brief period there I got the impression that it took its sources very serious. I’d like to say that maybe I got this article wrong, but isn’t what this article talks about more political science than history? The fall or the Roman Empire is a part of history, but how it’s used in political discourse has nothing to do with history, until decades from now anyway. People with an agenda has always used texts and history to further it, but isn’t it those people who are far more in control of what becomes history than the people who wrote the works?

igorkraw 5y ago
> more political science than history? The fall or the Roman Empire is a part of history, but how it’s used in political discourse has nothing to do with history, until decades from now anyway This exact example shows how interwoven they are. Which "fall" are you referring to? The end of the western Roman empire, or the end of Byzantium hundreds of years later? Or do you mean the replacement of the republic by the empire proper, and later the decline and division? What you consider the empire and its fall, if you choose to consider it one, isn't just semantics, it's a meme that defines a history based on a political need: for the Holy Roman empire of Germanic Nation, Rome was the mantle of legitimacy from an older time, for the various post renaissance empires the fall and the subsequent "dark ages" was some darkness to push back with their own order and light, for Nazi Germany and various connaisseurs of "degeneration theory" the fall always serves as a reason why they must impose strict social and moral control...history is inevitably tied to the time and politics it is born from (acting as a lens) and the goals it served (possibly subconsciously)
- raldi 5y ago
  Also, I'm not sure what "until decades from now" means in this context.

igorkraw 5y ago

> more political science than history? The fall or the Roman Empire is a part of history, but how it’s used in political discourse has nothing to do with history, until decades from now anyway This exact example shows how interwoven they are. Which "fall" are you referring to? The end of the western Roman empire, or the end of Byzantium hundreds of years later? Or do you mean the replacement of the republic by the empire proper, and later the decline and division? What you consider the empire and its fall, if you choose to consider it one, isn't just semantics, it's a meme that defines a history based on a political need: for the Holy Roman empire of Germanic Nation, Rome was the mantle of legitimacy from an older time, for the various post renaissance empires the fall and the subsequent "dark ages" was some darkness to push back with their own order and light, for Nazi Germany and various connaisseurs of "degeneration theory" the fall always serves as a reason why they must impose strict social and moral control...history is inevitably tied to the time and politics it is born from (acting as a lens) and the goals it served (possibly subconsciously)

raldi 5y ago
Also, I'm not sure what "until decades from now" means in this context.