The discipline is prone to relativism of this sort because its emphases appear to be entirely subjective, superficially at least.
Yet if we look at the biological world some of those damn things are clearly more important than others, leading to dramatic, systemic change, be they meteors from outer space or tiny, random mutations. (The former demonstrating their impact in something more like what we call real time.)
We've possibly reached a critical whataboutery juncture in the war in Ukraine. You may have noticed some of its output already. What about Yemen, Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria and so on.
There are already echoes of what I will from now on always refer to as the Whoopi Fallacy — the notion that as a fight between white people it is of necessity less historically important than white people apprently think it is.
History's apparent subjectivity has made it a key raw material in our culture wars. Much of the discipline these days involves the recovery of 'narratives' that have been forgotten or excluded and that is indeed important work, but we mustn't lose sight of the fact that there is a wider universal historical landscape with genuine contours.
And sure, one can focus elsewhere — on the anthills — for that is the free choice all of us westerners have, but one runs the risk of not spotting the approach of the particularly ravenous lump of history coming to take a bite out of us.
Sometimes the act of viewing the present through fashionable historical goggles creates distortions of perspective that can feed into burgeoning conflicts. Post 9-11 the so-called War on Terror has been one damned small incident after another, but in the minds of many of the participants, something vastly more significant in the history of the world.
Current events in Ukraine might be blamed on the delusions and destructive inclinations of one man — which is why the Adolf analogies are filed — but they also have a backstory in westerners perhaps not recognising the BIG history lying camouflaged there in the heart of Europe, like a sniper in the long grass.
We'd grown accustomed to look for our phantasms elsewhere, often enough in that wildest kind of projected history, the imagined future — cyberwars, naval stand-offs in the South China Sea, clashes of civilisations.
And then in walks an old warrior, strangely both familiar and unfamiliar — rather like The Return of Martin Guerre — and we are all a bit flummoxed.
* One can easily demonstrate the difference between short and long term 'historical' perspectives in the present by asking the question “Which has been the stand-out atrocious tactical decision of the past week — sending an army full of incompetent, undermotivated fools into Ukraine or bringing on Kepa for the penalties?”
There is also of course, this perspective...
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