Backbencher

In lecture ten, we talked more about Clark and Sinclair and their contributions to the history of their countries. We talked about the character of each man as well as why they do history. We came to the conclusion that these two men do history for themselves, which was regarded as "selfish". We discussed why anyone would do history and came up with four different answers, two of them being the most prominent. People do history for judgement, or they do it for identity. Dr. Isern talked about how earlier in life, people tend to do things for judgement, because they have a lot of decisions left to make in their lives. Later on they tend to do it for identity, because their decisions are already made. I found this discussion to be very interesting.

Clark and Sinclair did history for themselves because they loved it. I think this is really the only good reason to do anything. Even if you do not love the action itself, if you can love what it produces than that is good enough. I think historians are supposed to put the individual stories of history together and show that it means something. It can mean something in a million different ways, just as long as it shows some sort of meaning. They do this for themselves because they love it and they do it for the future generations because I think they want them to love it as much as they do. If they can show how rewarding it is to derive meaning out of endless events then maybe they can get the next generation to love history as well. I don't think it is any different there compared to here. They are different stories but the drive to want to make these stories known comes from the same place.