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Reading Howard Zinn's "People's history of united states" with its endless series of atrocities I just tend to not believe a single word from him. I liked this

by geodel 3y ago

Reading Howard Zinn's "People's history of united states" with its endless series of atrocities I just tend to not believe a single word from him. I liked this fact from Wikipedia article though: > "In 2008, the film was chosen by the Zinn Education Project (a collaboration of two national organizations, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change) to be included in an education package sent to 4000 high school and junior high school teachers across the country."

nonrandomstring 3y ago
> endless series of atrocities I just tend to not believe a single word The good news is that if you're susceptible to denial and percepticide it means you're a "nice person". TBH I had the same reactions reading Christopher Browning, Solzhenitsyn, Chomsky, Primo Levi. The bad news is that you grow out of it, and with the courage to face the world, realise that historians don't just make up stuff to scare people - otherwise they'd have more fun and money being fiction writers like Stephen King. Now I'm not a "nice" person I can tell you, the weird news is that the bad news is the good news.
- Jiro 3y ago
  >historians don't just make up stuff to scare people - otherwise they'd have more fun and money being fiction writers like Stephen King Historians don't want to scare people as a terminal goal. They want to scare people as a means to an end--promoting their ideology. Being Stephen King might scare more people, but it would fail to accomplish that end. And most of it isn't literally making stuff up, it's failing to mention some things and overemphasizing others, making things sound more or less certain than they really are, implying connections which may not be true, etc. It's like journalists--they can mislead without actually telling literal lies. Also, some of it is motivated reasoning, not lying. They honestly believe some things, but they honestly believe them because it's convenient for themselves.
  - thereticent 3y ago
    Critical thinking is not difficult if you make it a priority. Zinn states facts that can be verified. He also states opinions and arguments based on the select set of facts he presented, and you can take, leave, or criticize those arguments. It still stands that to say "I don't trust a word this guy says because he lists atrocities only" is lazy and uncritical. Not directed at you, but to the general conversation.

by geodel 3y ago

nonrandomstring 3y ago

> endless series of atrocities I just tend to not believe a single word The good news is that if you're susceptible to denial and percepticide it means you're a "nice person". TBH I had the same reactions reading Christopher Browning, Solzhenitsyn, Chomsky, Primo Levi. The bad news is that you grow out of it, and with the courage to face the world, realise that historians don't just make up stuff to scare people - otherwise they'd have more fun and money being fiction writers like Stephen King. Now I'm not a "nice" person I can tell you, the weird news is that the bad news is the good news.

Jiro 3y ago
>historians don't just make up stuff to scare people - otherwise they'd have more fun and money being fiction writers like Stephen King Historians don't want to scare people as a terminal goal. They want to scare people as a means to an end--promoting their ideology. Being Stephen King might scare more people, but it would fail to accomplish that end. And most of it isn't literally making stuff up, it's failing to mention some things and overemphasizing others, making things sound more or less certain than they really are, implying connections which may not be true, etc. It's like journalists--they can mislead without actually telling literal lies. Also, some of it is motivated reasoning, not lying. They honestly believe some things, but they honestly believe them because it's convenient for themselves.
- thereticent 3y ago
  Critical thinking is not difficult if you make it a priority. Zinn states facts that can be verified. He also states opinions and arguments based on the select set of facts he presented, and you can take, leave, or criticize those arguments. It still stands that to say "I don't trust a word this guy says because he lists atrocities only" is lazy and uncritical. Not directed at you, but to the general conversation.