Stories Can Give Us an Incorrect View of History - Sarah Seeliger

Stories Can Give Us an Incorrect View of History

The article I read was an interview about how narratives that are used to talk about history can give us incorrect information, and lead us to thinking something that is untrue. When I first glanced at this article, I disagreed with what the person being interviewed was saying. Once I read it, however, it made sense and I realized that I did agree with what he was saying. I believe that when history is put into the form of a story, it can give us incorrect information and leave out important parts of the event. 

In the article, the interviewer asked Alex Rosenbeurg, who is a Duke University philosophy professor, how narratives messed up the facts of history. Rosenbeurg replies by saying that while stories make you think that you have a good understanding of hwat happened during a particular event, both you and hte author of the story are really just guessing at the thoughts and motives of the people in the story. I agree with this because when I thought about this, I realizded something: Nobody knows what people in the past were thinking, and we can't always know what their motivation for doing things. There are situations in which we can know the motives, but that is not the case for every historical situation. 

Another thing that Alex Rosenbeurg points out is that humans  use something called "theory of mind" a lot when writing narratives and stories about events. Theory of mind is when a person predicts the thoughts, motives, and behaviors of another person. Rosenbeurg says that this works for certain situations, but it becomes a problem when it is applied to across a large period of time, because theory of mind is useless when it is used to try and control people. I believe that this is true. My thought on it this: how can you predict and control the thoughts or motives of someone from the past? The person already did what they were going to do, so there is no need for prediction or assmption. 

All in all, I agree with what Alex Rosenbeurg in saying that stories and/or narratives do not provide us with accurate information about history, and that there are better ways to learn and gather information about the subject. 


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