Ideas: the Overlapping Categories of Old, New, and Good

Academics in general, but particularly historians, work with ideas. Indeed, ideas are the finished products. Of course, sources are (or should be) paramount, but sources of what? The sources of our ideas about the past, people's motivations, what effected change, human nature, etc... A good craftsmen will display to the market meticulously-designed tangible products, but a historian presents to the world ideas wrought from the raw materials of their sources with the tools of their analysis. Incidentally, this is why clarity is so important in scholarship: a salesman should not expect to move physical merchandise if consumers examine it and are not quite sure what it is or does, and likewise a scholar cannot reasonably expect much interest if readers are uncertain what ideas he is arguing that they accept, and/or what those ideas are made of, i.e., what sources he used. Good writing is not the concern here though, but good ideas, and their relationship to novelty.

(Quick disclaimer: if philosophically you think the idea of "good and bad" ideas is so subjective as to be devoid of meaning, I'm probably not going to have much for you here. I define good here as respecting truth and the sanctity of human life, and bad as the opposite.)

During my undergraduate studies I knew a philosophy professor who was fond of prefacing lectures with the wry remark, "May I not say anything new today." His logic was that the good life and the sound philosophy that makes it possible are not likely to be a cutting-edge developments--wisdom is gold, but foolishness is kudzu. There is enough insight there for the comment to stick with me, but of course it is not a truth universal to all contexts: while virtues may be the same at their essence across the ages, we have learned previously unknown, forgotten, suppressed or distorted details of the past. There are good new ideas in history. The idea that the people already living in the Americas upon the arrival of Europeans were not a monolith (the Savages/Indians/Natives/indigenous peoples), but separate peoples with innumerable* distinct cultures, actions, and interests was a good one: it restored human dignity to people who had previously been treated as little more than part of the scenery of the New World.

*Innumerable is often used just to mean "a lot," which applies to Native American tribes, but it literally means "unable to be numbered," and owing to inadequate surviving evidence, that sense is also true.

So ideas can be good and bad, new and old. This creates a matrix of four combinations (new and good, new and bad, old and good, old and bad), and failure to consider the characteristics of each is a bit like eyeballing measurements and not asking about common pitfalls in construction; it is the haste that writes much waste. Here are some preliminary reflections on each:

New and Good - It has to be acknowledged that this is the most valued because it is the most difficult. Every semester educators from high school teachers up to thesis advisers must break the news as tactfully as they can that no, that idea is far from new, or huh, that idea is utterly bizarre. It's also worth noting that throughout the ages many people have rejected ideas as bad because they are too counter-cultural, and they generally deem them "stupid" rather than "too counter-cultural." That said, pride can make an ignorant person declare, "They are not ready for my ideas," when really, the ideas are just bad.

New and Bad - Though there are many charlatans in the world, most who argue bad ideas are sincere: they think their ideas are good. You should give a LOT of thought to the various causes of poor judgment, e.g., (sleep-deprived) desperation on account of a publication or assignment deadline, pride making a person resist honest consideration of counter-arguments, bad ideological dogma, etc...Do you feel comfortable that you are not susceptible to any of those issues? Don't.

Old and Good - This category is sorely undervalued. Who really gets excited by the prospect of verifying the truth of an accepted fact? That is not actually a rhetorical question. The answer is the person who recognizes that many old "good" ideas turn out to be bad, and that even a good accepted idea does not animate positive action near as powerfully as a good idea fueled by a lot of compelling evidence. A lot of movements begin with someone passionate about proving more forcefully an old idea that is popularly-but-complacently accepted.

Old and Bad - These ideas persist for a reason (actually many reasons). Make sure and establish the grounds on which you reject the old idea as bad, and then theorize why it persisted so long (in that order, and make sure not to be too flippant on the second part). When doing scholarship on an old bad idea--phrenology, scientific racism, the Inquisition--a common mistake is to take for granted the obviousness that the idea is bad. This assumption can make readers think the author is undecided on the matter (or in some cases that he supports the idea), and/or can lead the historian to fail to fight a misconception he hates, because he fails to recognize the continued need to do so. While phrenology is a byword for bad pseudo-scientific ideas, many historians treat racial issues with a reckless false presupposition that readers hold no racist ideas, and while the Catholic Church has apologized for the Inquisition, the question of the relationship between coercion and orthodoxy is much murkier than most people naturally think.

Look back over the descriptions above--what prominent and/or important features of each am I missing?

Identifying Groups, or Words as Live Wires

In my study of the Linguistic Turn in Historiography last semester, I began to recognize more fully how much hidden freight there can be in word selection. The tired example is "revolutionary" or "terrorist," but it has become so cliche that its power is greatly diminished. The more topical case that I confronted was the label to apply to the events in Los Angeles in 1992 following the announcement of the verdict in the Rodney King case. After an embarrassing amount of thought, I concluded that the use of "riot" generally implies a critical, holistically negative judgment, "civil unrest" is neutral, and "violent protest" conveys sympathy with those who expressed outrage at the verdict in the streets*.

One of the categories where this is the most perpetually-fraught is demonyms, e.g., Indians, Native Americans, Natives, Amerindians, Indigenous Americans, etc... A lengthy linguistics paper would probably be required to treat this topic comprehensively, so with a humble hat tip to Montaigne I will content myself with some general observations on the matter.

First, there is a fluid periodization of the most popularly-accepted term for a group. The people English colonists encountered were generally "Savages" at least through 1776 (the Declaration of Independence used the term), but by 1787, the Constitution was excluding "Indians not taxed" from representative apportionment. By the second half of the 20th century, the preferred term changed quite rapidly more than once with a lot of discord on the subject.

Second, there is a strong correlation between politics and terminology, and a common power play is to explain what the Other means in their use of a new term, often with a certain conspiratorial distrust ('They say it is about respecting x, but really it is an insult to y'.)

Third, in light of the first two, it is important for a historian to demonstrate knowledge of the periodizations and politics of words, and to show a certain measure of humility on that score. The natural starting position is one of ignorance, and so this can take a lot of work, a lot of reading and analysis, but that is the essence of historical scholarship. To be blunt, there is no way around the fact that if you betray a lack of awareness of the freight in a certain term's use, you have to admit that you missed something important.

Fourth and finally, because people start out unaware of terms' baggage, inferring anything absolutely is foolish. If a person uses a word that as a general rule would put them in a certain political camp, a scholar (or conversationalist) should ask a clarifying question and/or look for further evidence before concluding that they are part of the camp. The argument that "he should know the history of that word" only goes so far--we all should know more.

*I emphasize "generally," because of the simple truism that we often do not say what we mean. So, a participant defending his actions might have told the television cameras, "THIS is why we're rioting"--certainly not implying an unconscious negative assessment of his conduct.

Belated Week 1

Albert said (if memory serves me) that true genius is the ability to focus on one thing at at time. What a luxury.

One of my favorite anecdotes from the Cold War is that a general advising Stalin during one of our episodes of brinkmanship counseled caution based on the time he spent in New York City: "Comrade, if we go to war now, it will be chaos, and the Americans will win, because they live with chaos everyday." While it is likely apocryphal, it sure does capture American life--we're either busy or bored, with no in between. Last week I piled on this internship with the Florida Historical Quarterly on top of my full time job with Florida Virtual School, and two boys, ages 2.95 and five-months (I'm compensating for my uncited anecdotes with pedantic precision on the ages). So naturally, I'm wrapping up my first week on Tuesday of the following week. I'm sure I'll be all caught up by Friday (see picture above).

My first project is copy-editing an article for the Fall 2017 Quarterly--it gave me a chuckle last week to learn that the journals of state historical societies are notoriously back-logged. For example, the Journal of Mississippi History last hit its subscribers with an issue in the summer of 2013*. I believe Dr. Lester when she says we will be caught up by the end of 2018, but I think Mississippi might need to think outside of the box. (That said, it is my fervent hope that sometime soon they release an issue titled "Fall 2013" with no comment.)

I typed a substantial paragraph on the article I am reviewing, and then realized that I am uncertain whether or not my bosses would be pleased with me providing a preview of the content we will soon release, even if this blog's readers are likely to number in the single digits. I'll confirm that this is okay, and put that into my second post. I can think of no more fitting way to conclude my first reflection than to note that I now need to switch to the task of logging my hours for the first two weeks of December for the fine people of Florida Virtual School (the full-time job).** You don't want our chaos North Korea.

*http://www.mdah.ms.gov/new/interact/subscribe/journal-of-mississippi-history/
**To be clear, I did not have credentials to the system to log said hours until the end of last week, and was just told that I need to perform some personal anthropology on what I was working on--still too fitting with the theme not to share.