historical objectivety

June 7th

This guy lectured about History and Philosophy. Most of the following is a paraphrase of his words.

Historians complicate our lives. For example what are we supposed to do about all the immigrants? The border and crossing it has become an issue. Are we talking about building a wall? I doubt it’s the same as the Berlin Wall. { The speaker thinks so. He is very critical about the guest worker status (of Mexicans). He has a JFK Bostonian accent.} Christians should care about history (definitely) God entered human history at a certain time (hasn’t he always been in history since he created everything?) There is a debate about objectivity with history. We all study reality from different angles. The word post modern is a tricky word. No conversation could be made if you had no objectivity at all. History is a conversation between the past and present.

This was probably the only analogy that he spoke about that I liked.

The best way to respect the dead is speak to them (no thanks) or hear them. In Blizzardly weather we would tie a cord to the house and ourselves. We can find our way back with the cord and that cord is history.

A few things that sort of set me off about our speaker on this particular day was that he spoke about reparations and that we should have some sort of reparations (where do you draw the line?). He also spoke briefly about affirmative action (don’t get me started). However, he saw affirmative action as a way of breaking through standards or bad social norms and not something that should be permanent. Once again, where do you draw the line?