Thunderbolts Forum v3.0

by **Brigit** » Sat Feb 20, 2021 5:48 pm

Thanks nick c. I'll be more careful.

by **nick c** » Sat Feb 20, 2021 1:04 am

*No one* can prove I was off-topic. And also, this is not an admission of anything (:

No problem. History is not a taboo topic on this forum. It would be off topic on the Electric Universe board, but is otherwise an appropriate topic. The only question is whether it should be on the NIAMI board or not.

by **Brigit** » Fri Feb 19, 2021 5:55 pm

by Cargo » Mon Feb 15, 2021 11:51 pm:

"In this forum though, we should try to keep topics from straying away to far from the universe of electricity and plasma. The models of history, and the alien sky are of course very important, since we are talking about re-telling the History Channels version of the Universe."

*No one* can prove I was off-topic. And also, this is not an admission of anything (:

But let's all get back to work. Actually, the whole idea of this thread is to perhaps inspire (younger) readers to first identify the various models of history they encounter, and after practice, recognize what is the hand of the historian, and what is history.

Another complication is that we all find ourselves in a post-modern or even what some say is a post-truth era, and there are fewer and fewer standards of evidence, so that even primary and secondary sources are increasingly dismissed as nothing more than unverifiable and unacceptable and unreliable ways of determining what happened in the past. But this is an unnatural situation, and artificially imposed by academia, top-down. Culturally and legally we do not need to accept it. This is why I wanted to emphasize that the writing of history is not necessarily a pursuit reserved to professional historians, but is a natural outcome for people who share language, law and experiences across multiple generations.

And for a people who especially value literacy and record-keeping, their memories and identity are not in the hands of professionals -- and in particular those professionals who have thrown out all standards of evidence for reasons of their own.

So, to the eight models of history, we may now add the Post-modern/Post-truth model of history.

by **Cargo** » Tue Feb 16, 2021 6:51 am

Brigit,
I, as my own historian, love your contributions to my history and what I know. Too many good books have been lost to history I think.
I hope everyone else may have some-same level of seeing things in such a wide perspective. In this forum though, we should try to keep topics from straying away to far from the universe of electricity and plasma.

The models of history, and the alien sky are of course very important, since we are talking about re-telling the History Channels version of the Universe.

by **Brigit** » Sun Feb 14, 2021 5:40 am

Perhaps fans of Nietzsche might like to explain the ethic of the Ubermensch which Jezebel exhibits.

Interesting that she found professional protesters to be so useful in attaining her ends, which was to eliminate the private property rights of Nabal.

by **Brigit** » Fri Nov 27, 2020 7:46 pm

I think the most outstanding theme of this historical narrative is the ownership of land. Understanding the passage revolves around the question of who can and who cannot own land in this specific nation.

by **Brigit** » Wed Nov 18, 2020 6:47 pm

For fun, we might even look at a few interpretations, using the same event.

by **Brigit** » Wed Nov 18, 2020 6:45 pm

Now the one thing we all might agree on is that there are many ways to approach this historical record.

And of course, the approach will be determined by the model used by the historian.

by **Brigit** » Thu Nov 12, 2020 12:22 am

Models of History: the real history of the Alphabet, literacy

By getting the history of the alphabet wrong, it is easy to make paternalistic put-downs about whether the Syrians/Hebrews of the Bible could have recorded their own family and national history, as well as their civil and ritual laws, in the 15th c. BC.

But I would like to take a series of events and personalities, which the historians of the Jews found to be of great historical significance, and test it for its historical quality. This is a small section of history from the northern territory of Israel, around the early to mid 800s BC. It is taken from from the Book of Kings.

1 And it came to pass after these things that Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard which was in Jezreel, next to the palace of Ahab king of Samaria. 2 So Ahab spoke to Naboth, saying, “Give me your vineyard, that I may have it for a vegetable garden, because it is near, next to my house; and for it I will give you a vineyard better than it. Or, if it seems good to you, I will give you its worth in money.”

3 But Naboth said to Ahab, “The Lord forbid that I should give the inheritance of my fathers to you!”

4 So Ahab went into his house sullen and displeased because of the word which Naboth the Jezreelite had spoken to him; for he had said, “I will not give you the inheritance of my fathers.” And he lay down on his bed, and turned away his face, and would eat no food. 5 But Jezebel his wife came to him, and said to him, “Why is your spirit so sullen that you eat no food?”

6 He said to her, “Because I spoke to Naboth the Jezreelite, and said to him, ‘Give me your vineyard for money; or else, if it pleases you, I will give you another vineyard for it.’ And he answered, ‘I will not give you my vineyard.’ ”

7 Then Jezebel his wife said to him, “You now exercise authority over Israel! Arise, eat food, and let your heart be cheerful; I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.”

8 And she wrote letters in Ahab’s name, sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters to the elders and the nobles who were dwelling in the city with Naboth. 9 She wrote in the letters, saying,

Proclaim a fast, and seat Naboth with high honor among the people; 10 and seat two men, scoundrels, before him to bear witness against him, saying, “You have blasphemed God and the king.” Then take him out, and stone him, that he may die.

11 So the men of his city, the elders and nobles who were inhabitants of his city, did as Jezebel had sent to them, as it was written in the letters which she had sent to them. 12 They proclaimed a fast, and seated Naboth with high honor among the people. 13 And two men, scoundrels, came in and sat before him; and the scoundrels witnessed against him, against Naboth, in the presence of the people, saying, “Naboth has blasphemed God and the king!” Then they took him outside the city and stoned him with stones, so that he died. 14 Then they sent to Jezebel, saying, “Naboth has been stoned and is dead.”

15 And it came to pass, when Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned and was dead, that Jezebel said to Ahab, “Arise, take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused to give you for money; for Naboth is not alive, but dead.” 16 So it was, when Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, that Ahab got up and went down to take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.

by **Brigit** » Wed Nov 11, 2020 11:14 pm

Models of History subtopic: literacy and historical narrative

by paladin17 » Fri Oct 30, 2020 7:41 am
"This video deals with the fundamental aspects (and problems) of history, including some of the mentioned here (plots etc.)."

In another segment of this video, Eugene touches on the idea that history was really only possible for the individual nation-state, and that it only emerged in the Modern Age (1500) for most of the world. (Please correct me if that is not a fair paraphrase or date.)

I have agreed with him in the above post. I compared the recording of history by a nation-state to the individual's cognitive ability to relate his life in a cohesive narrative. I wanted to say that the writing of a unique national narrative is a natural activity, and that it is not necessarily a task relegated only to a professional class of historians. The writing of history is a natural undertaking by literate people who share a language and past.

This may answer why national histories seem to appear only after the Modern Age, at the time when people began to reject and rid themselves of the custom of writing only in Latin (thus keeping literacy within a small caste), and began to read and write in their own respective languages, thus allowing more and more people to read and write. Examples of writers who used colloquial languages include the English copyists of the Bible called Lollards, Dante and Chaucer, Galileo and Leeuwenhoek.

But suppose the histories all have that wrong; suppose there were hundreds of literate people in small states during the Bronze Age? In that case there would have been books and histories written by these nations also. My reason for suggesting this is that the Bible itself, that is, the Old Testament, is a cohesive national narrative, beginning in 1440+- and being completed by c. 440s. We know that it survived many concerted and brutal attempts by both the Greek Empire and the Roman Empire to eradicate it. Therefore, we may explore the idea with some confidence that most other national writing did not survive the Greek and Roman conquests.

But in either case, whether national narratives arose in the Bronze Age, or whether they did not emerge until the Renaissance, the question still revolves around general literacy, around who could read and write at a given place and time, and therefore around the real history of the Alphabet.

by **Brigit** » Wed Nov 11, 2020 10:37 pm

by paladin17 » Fri Oct 30, 2020 7:41 am
"This video deals with the fundamental aspects (and problems) of history, including some of the mentioned here (plots etc.)."

Thank you for that intriguing video on history, what it is, and who writes it (and who re-writes it).

In the first segment, Eugene discusses literary devices which a historian might use in order to make history intelligible. The example he uses is of a historian illustrating how a historical moment, called the situation x, might go through a certain process, and emerge as situation y.

It is up to the historian to provide the elements of situation x that he needs in order to produce situation y, after the crisis -- which he likely also provided.

In that sense, history in its most basic form is effective storytelling. A good story teller or movie maker wastes nothing. Every detail comes to have meaning (usually material, but also very often symbolic) as the story unfolds through the crisis and comes to rest in a kind of resolution. The good historian is making history intelligible to people who are far removed in time, through a type of story telling. But this is true of any person as well: each individual is in many ways communicating the story of his recent experiences with those closest to him, and also with various distant circles of people. He may be a gifted story teller or he may simply recount events in a just-the-facts manner; and he may need to share a different narrative depending on the audience (for example, a resume requires different dates and events than a discussion with a friend, but both may be true histories).

Now it also happens that there is a cognitive test which is based on a person's ability to share his own past as a narrative. The idea of the test goes something like this. In healthy individuals events, personalities, dates and circumstances are integrated and can be related in a narrative. In traumatized individuals, events are more disconnected, and they are less able to give a cohesive narrative of their own life.**

I would like to suggest that this is true of individuals and that it can be extended to nations as well. I would like to submit that a healthy nation knows its own history, and recounts it in the form of festivals, holidays, sayings, sculpture (statues and memorials), and in books, and can also relate its own laws and customs to that history -- just as a healthy individual can retell his own life story, and why he has chosen certain rules of life for himself.

To sum,

history may use literary devices,

history may be considered to be a genre of literature; and,

history is a natural expression arising from literate people who share a language, and is not necessarily an activity unique to a professional class.

**ref:
Siegel, Daniel J. (1999). The Developing Mind.
Narrative:
Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)
integrative function of
interidividual integration and
making sense of others and
memory and
remembering self and

by **moses** » Sat Oct 31, 2020 2:09 am

"Is there a plot to history?" Brigit

Like is there something inside us all that makes us all walk down the same roads following the same story again and again. Some trauma in the past that has a story that gets imprinted in all of us ?

Cheers,
Mo

by **paladin17** » Fri Oct 30, 2020 2:41 pm

This video deals with the fundamental aspects (and problems) of history, including some of the mentioned here (plots etc.).
Also there is an interesting concept of "quantum history", which is (in its different aspects) described here.

by **Brigit** » Sat Oct 17, 2020 10:45 pm

So this leads to the question which Karl R Popper continually and maddeningly asked about history, in his criticism of historicism (that is, the idea that there is a plot to history).

Is there a plot to history?

by **Brigit** » Sat Oct 17, 2020 10:03 pm

The author, H. Elmer Barnes, having discussed whether Egypt or Babylonia (I or II) have a native historical narrative, goes on to show a lack of historical narrative under the Assyrians. He concludes,

Finally, from Assyrian sources there are the above mentioned lists of limmi or the eponym canon, covering the period of 892-704 BC.

The Babyloninan counterpart of Manetho's work, Berossus' history of Babylonia in three books, written about 280 BC, was the first systematic historical narrative produced by a Babylonian or Assyrian scribe. It has, unfortunately, been lost and only survives in scanty references in Josephus, Eusebius and a few other later historians.

Whatever its value, its date shows that true historical narrative was not a product of the period of the height of ether Babylonian or Assyrian culture.

Now back to Egypt. It is a well-known problem, for historians and hobbyists alike, that the primary written sources from ancient Egypt are commissioned by Pharoahs. And Pharoahs tend to exaggerate (read: fabricate) their victories abroad and their achievements at home. Further, succeeding Pharoahs within a Dynasty may obliterate records of previous Pharoahs. If not, than certainly a new Dynasty seeks to extend its legitimacy to rule by erasing the names of previous Dynasties from buildings and records. In short, what is written by Egyptian Pharoahs is notoriously less than reliable.

Someone else may like to parse this out in another way, but for purposes of illustration I think Egypt can make a fine example of the "unhistoric" view of history. In other words, Egypt's native history is made up of unrelated occurrences, a mishmash of dates, names, and battles, from which -- of the truth and order of events -- only a very little can be learned. And this is interesting, because we take for granted the ability of a people to recount its own history as a continuous narrative. This is not so in the case of the Egyptians. To have a continuous, native, historical narrative there must be some unifying ideas across time that gives a continuity to events. (Or perhaps you could say, a "character arc" to a nation across time.) Among many other reasons, the transitions of power between Pharoahs and Dynasties appear to have prevented any native historical Egyptian narrative from being written, and certainly not a systemic one.

More than that, for the Egyptians and the Babylonians (I & II) and the Assyrians, "the true historical narrative was not a product of the period of the heights of their cultures."

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