Why do we study history?

Let us suppose for a moment that the Filipino people exist as a homogeneous body and the life of that body is reflected in their history. Thus, the educator of that history tells us that the reason why we should study history is: to understand the present and prepare for the future, one must learn from the past; and in recent years we have been told of a “history from below”, “history of the inarticulate” or “history from the point of view of the people” – a history of the body from the perspective of the body. That is as far as subjectivity goes, as our own gray-haired Teodoro Agoncillo proudly declared, although one wonders if subjectivity is on the side of the people -if it ever is, since this is only a presumption- or is it on the side of the people. village. side of the Manila graybeards, who because they are located in the abstract center of the Philippines also felt that their historical consciousness is the concrete center of any historical understanding.

The happy educator of history then plays the role of the umalohokan, an instructor and not a teacher (no one likes to teach anyone under this “education from below”), a mere microphone in the presence of the gray beards -that is, the “authorities” of the Philippine historical tradition who pride themselves on a certain transcendental wisdom learned from extensive research. Like Hegel, and not surprisingly like Hegel because many so-called Filipino intellectuals revere Hegel without understanding him, these “authorities” of Philippine history see themselves as products of the historical system of the world process.

The problem, however, is whether such a body exists beyond the abstraction of our sense of history, or if the Filipino people are too much like our gray beards, and add to that the Bangsamoro, they are nothing more than illusory ghosts that emerge of the corpse of the “inarticulate”. or the stench “from below”? Our educators can openly claim, and claim with some degree of emotional disappointment, that the Filipino people lack historical awareness. What is the difference between people then and now in terms of interpreting the past? Any! And yet, we must place on the altar of the spirit of the world their point of view, their inarticulateness and their fear by the same intelligentsia that is placing them on heights that they themselves cannot reach if they rely solely on their weak plastic power.

And this “Filipino people”? This is what I propose: that the town was born and received its coup de grace in the Philippine Revolution of 1896, beyond which the town exists merely as an abstraction nothing more and nothing better than the text within any document. Truly, the Filipino is a modern concept in the sense that he enjoyed his becoming in art and religion, in pain and sadness, in misery and celebration – that is, in experience and in life – only to be buried by an excess of meaning. of history, the sense of community, the sense of province, the sense of origin, that is, the sense of “where I come from”. Henceforth, it became postmodern: “there is nothing outside the text.”

The saints of the Absolute Spirit, because that’s how our gray hairs are, wanted the young people to understand that they are part of a whole and part of a system. History is knowing where you should be and what role you should play: understanding the present depends on knowing the past. A noble premise if the end of life is a mere episteme, although now it seems that the episteme itself is the end of life. Is that why we learn history? To know? And if we really know, or concede that we now know all there is to know about the past, what then? The graybeard saints may suggest: that we may have historical lectures, in which we may marvel at our own magnificence and bathe in the glory of having too much history: that we may hide from the terrible sound of the overabundance of meaning in modern life . : that we can put up milestones and other monument-marks for the gradually dying dead; that we can gossip about past glories while assuming the very absence of history among us despite an excess of history in our roach-ridden tomes.

Perhaps Nietzsche was right after all: history in excess has become a form of selfishness. The historian’s pride, although a pride born from the feeling of being lost in the matrix of so much history. What then is this excess? I consider this true: that history must have a horizon through awareness of experience and awareness of the evolution of one’s own life, and anything beyond that horizon is excessive. It makes no sense to remember everything much more to suggest that memories comprise a world process, a world historical system. However, the young man was made to feel that historical knowledge is such-and-such a course, complete as far as importance is concerned, a system limited only by the margins of a textbook and content within its front and back covers: the educator of history is a mother instrument for the production of its sound. This is the story you must learn. This is the story you must understand. This is the story you should put into your own memory, whether your experience warrants it or not. After all, knowledge is universal and objective, and too much knowledge is better than too little knowledge. The will of a system is, in effect, a decadent will.

However, is it not equally true that a glutton is tempted to immobility by excess? That by swallowing too much knowledge, one is reduced to doing nothing? Is not this “swallowing” a product of having shaped history for general public consumption on the one hand and the selfishness of historians for the trade on the other? Take for example the notion of objectivity in history. In the search for the episteme, the historiography, the method and its product, knowledge surpasses any purpose of history. historicism! The cry of the oppressed! Contrary to the subjectivity of history in the service of life, the notion that history must be objective is a subjectivity of a modern historian wholly divided within himself like a house about to collapse; for such history can only be the product of the inability to judge, that is, of weakness. And the story is not for the faint-hearted, within which the mob and mass man are devoured into stillness, eyes blinking, like an observer devoid of the real human condition buried in the abstractions sparked by his imagination. An objective historian is like a eunuch, for those who can no longer fill history with themes can only be content to watch history pass, like a eunuch who simply watches in pain without the balls to create life, or a glutton who sits idle. in the garden of satisfaction: I long for him just for the next drinking session. Thus, the historical sense of the saints and their disciples reduced historians to servant mothers of the world spirit, continually offering new historical insights and continually tweaking historiography hopefully toward perfection. The youth, the younger generation, is being trained to follow and obey the educators of history. Instead, I say: if young people are truly to become the hope of the homeland, they must be taught the value of being ahistorical as opposed to being excessively historical. Ahistorical? Absurd! Any kind of man or tribe has history: it’s just a matter of differences in presentation. Nope! Now that’s absurd. Let the youth exclaim as Nietzsche did: the will of a system is a decadent will!

The ahistorical is always in a position to willingly exercise its plastic power. Unlike modern man, he does not suffer from the duality of internal-external, and always sees the fullness of knowledge and wisdom: for the ahistorical there is no difference between knowledge and wisdom simply because there is no duality. Internally, most of modern man is subject to the tyranny of a higher purpose, be it God, humanism or even militant atheism, within which he finds solace. Externally, most of these modern men suffer from the open character of modern life: the loss of meaning, the emerging immorality, the chaos of our era. It is in this simultaneous birth and destruction of meaning, like that of the Filipino people, in modern life that modern man was terrified as Eliade can say. This terror placed historical man like a turtle wrapped in his own shell to protect himself from the “terror of history” and to focus not on the mission of history to empower life, but on the means by which it is achieved, reducing it to action. Modern man looks at his experience, interprets it on the basis of a text (about texts!), affirms an action, declares its historical character as it manifests itself in his historical knowledge as the action enters into historiography: the action becomes returns to analysis after analysis. after analysis (ad nauseam) until selfishness becomes apparent. The Higaunon in Iligan City, at least those who remain traditional, weigh the experience, interpret it in terms of the evolution of their lives and culture, decide on an action, and the action becomes, in the eyes of historians, history. as event. Never underestimate the life force of the ahistorical: by teaching indigenous people our brand of history, we also implant that modern-age egoism in their culture, and time will tell whether such egoism can produce an “other” in the minds of others. . the indigenous peoples or they too will be victims of the weaknesses of modern man. Our indigenous people have no need of our decadence.

Finally, why are we studying history? Is it presumptuous to say that history beyond the service of life is nothing more than useless babble? I imitate Nietzsche: just as any excess in this world is detrimental to life, an excess of history is not exempt. Life is the structural foundation of history, without which history has no meaning. I speak to the youth and youth at heart because you are the hope of this country, find in history the willpower that can inspire you to be someone great-not great in the sense of the mob and the masses, not the ” bubble in the deluge” of Constantine, but in wielding the strength that his plastic power can understand when to stop studying history and when to create it. Let the antiquarian in you learn to preserve what must be preserved and the critic in you to let go of what must be forgotten. History is not history if you cannot learn to forget. The study of history is not only about remembering the past, but also about learning to forget: knowing what it means to be historical and experiencing what it is not to be historical. In the end, it’s about knowing not just how to write the story, but knowing how to create one that makes the story a worthy engagement.