M

ost fail at history. The past cannot truthfully, without prejudice or an idealising influence, be understood by modern people applying contemporary epistemology and all the subsequent amendments of technology and custom. This failure occurs among cultural conservatives and with those who are not so regressive. Conservatives fail as they wish to return to a fake, glorified, and distorted past that never existed and never resembled their moral inclinations. Our currently prolific ex-conservative authoritarian ideologues make the same mistake and make it worse. Progressives fail as they too cannot conceive of the past, the ways people lived, how they perceived the world, not coloured by modern influences. Modern influences, of moral character, language, psychology, or epistemology, may derive from past philosophies and politics, yet whatever ways we have of perceiving the world today, the air we breathe, any latent assumptions on nature, life, or being, become disconnected and removed—having evolved into a new phenomenological species, with the past now extinct. For everyone here, and for too many in-between, the past is less something to be studied and learnt from than something to be selectively mined for acutely contemporary concerns, thus assuring current moral superiority.

Is the past, then, unrecognisable? No, hopefully not, but I see no-one, or no more than a scant few, who can imagine history and embody the minds of our ancestors without deference to the epistemological traps of today. We are always stuck in our time. Whatever morality I myself may agree with is modern, my conception of politics and philosophy is modern, and its past influences still result in a view of life that is, through time and change, distant and even unrecognisable to the dead. I cannot begin to ever thoroughly understand, say, medieval life as I cannot truly escape today. This may seem banal, but it is worth remembering. We cannot render the past with unimpeachable accuracy, overcoming all our significant linguistic, cultural, political, and technological developments.

I see representations of the past that align with my moral and philosophical sensibilities, but they do not reflect accurate history. I do not think this history is impossible, with true feelings and ideas now beyond us, but it is at any rate more difficult to address.

Read many current accounts of history and it is easy to tell, from language, attitude, ideological maps, and any view on how life functions, that it was written in the 21st century by people tempered, or trapped, by present-day thoughts—to the extent that they are alien to their historical subjects. This does not mean we are necessarily morally wrong, nor does it mean we should replicate the morality of the past, but our ability to understand the biography of historical people is tremendously limited. Our world is that of now. The past is not just a foreign land: if we stretch the analogy and repeat ourselves, it is a different planet inhabited by extraterrestrials. Resemblances in behaviour are superficial—I do not trust us to be able to reveal or accurately portray a different scope of knowledge, a different phenomenology, a different way of conceiving everything. We have evolved, though that does not mean we have progressed—only that we have changed. Language, and the limits of language determining thought, particularly shows just how different thought once was and now is. It is not impossible, while maintaining ourselves, to render this different life, yet it is harder to see when obscured by our own prejudices—and across the entire political spectrum. We all fail. The map of history we have, what dates are noted, who we are occupied with, none of this depicts life and events from a true view of the dead; rather, it shows life through several filters of modernity—basically a caricature. We do not have to go back far to corroborate this. What did Samuel Johnson think? How did he think? How was he able, given his influences, to think? What capacity did he have for thought? From any angle most are confined and unable to think beyond their current mores—stuck within our current paradigm. We can answer about ourselves, not Johnson.

Life is seen as a timeline, a chronological order, with events and a teleology bending towards justice, progress, or some other ideal. Moral regression or political upheaval are seen as temporary setbacks or necessary backwards steps in order to take two steps forwards; often for a nebulous historical goal. A sense of historical progress feels almost intuitive, to the extent that it is insulting and frightening for many to suggest otherwise. What we want, what is best for us, or what is morally good is not practically, politically, mechanically, spiritually, or metaphysically inevitable. It is unsatisfying to think that on the level of events there is no automatic selection which conforms with our moral requirements—though that is probably the case.

To gain a glimpse of what life was like for people in another era we need to understand our own time, how it developed and came to be, and know how removed—or not—any historical subjects are from it. This does not excuse or justify the past, and rather is an attempt, as much as possible, at experiential accuracy. It is fine to condemn the past as a contrast to our current moral grounds, but we should first be accurate. That the past was often horrific is obvious, yet this fact is treated as if it were a rare novelty, with those who relish in declaring it so for their own ego. Nasty history does not mean we are morally improved, or that we will progress. Many do not understand the present by understanding the past and our chronology. Instead, the past is understood in reverse, fixed with present customs, with a forgotten or obscure development, where comprehensible yet dull ideas are employed to make easy, comforting analogies. Almost all historical analogies are inaccurate in some way.

It is difficult to think like a medieval peasant. It is much easier to think of an observable, accessible modern image, deformed and twisted by time, as if left out in the weather and no longer recognisable, and think that was as it always was. I cannot suggest that someone from the past is really an alien, with a morality as well as a psychology that does not resemble contemporary humanity. Indeed, there are moral, ethical, and psychological resemblances that a 21st century person and a 13th century person share.

Instead, while we are alike, we underestimate how different we are—the past is transformed into a flat cartoon, holding our current thoughts while dressed in cosplay. We do not understand the past in forward gear, we learn it and comprehend it backwards, from the present, even if we do not wish to. Present ideas develop after a gestation, influenced by the past. But this development is hardly recognised. The current state of the world is as it is due to history, but few, myself included, understand this process. The historical narrative is constantly distorted by the end result; the long backwards shadow. A common phrase says that people are a product of their time. The overabundant equipment and overwhelming industry of modern life make this ever more so for us. The past as some pure form cannot exist. Cliché as it is, the past becomes an invention of the present rather than the present a product of the past.

B

eyond real history, much historical fantasy and fiction face a similar impoverishment. Much fantasy is a Walt Disney act of historical fiction with old props on an old stage addressing contemporary sensibilities and conceived in a mind that can only recognise contemporary sensibilities (of whatever political, moral, or psychological persuasion). This is sometimes fine, yet it means modern fantasy moves beyond a purpose of older myth-making. It is familiar, agreeable, and far too obvious. Of course I may agree with and recognise an allegory for political autonomy and some other message I am happy with, yet dressed in Renaissance clothing. Nevertheless it is a modern story—a story that would be identical in a science-fiction future or in present-day Britain. It is the present day in fancy dress. I enjoy the clothing, the styling, the swords and the magic, but there is not much in the way of myth. We lose myth—which requires us, in part, to suspend understanding and tell a story regardless of our personal attachments. Sometimes I am eager for true escape, myths and allegories that may contain a moral lesson but are truly fantastical; psychologically, spiritually, existentially confusing; and not me. Not some easily accessible moral or message I agree with, but a creative story.

None of this is out of reach. For now, testimonies from the past still exist. History with more density, more depth, shared, and with more of an imagination about how our inner lives have changed is possible. The case for a more accurate picture of the past is banal but nonetheless true. Accurate history reveals social, maybe civilisational decay. Historians often play Cassandra, warning us of civil degeneration and the collapse, or at least the faltering and decline, of empires and kingdoms. We have a better description of our current malaise, institutional decline, a crisis of trust, and sociological devolution, if we can sense the echos of history. I’m not optimistic about what can be done, or prevented, but I’m not gloomy enough to give up. Much of the future will be like the past—similar tragedies, similar tyrannies, similar deaths. We cannot rely on our immediate environment alone. However uncomfortable it is, we deserve accuracy and something closer to the truth, as elusive as it may be.