The Weight of the World

As of late I've been carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. I know that I, as a historian, should be able to distance myself from the terrible things I read about. I should be able to treat it professionally, and without letting my own emotions or morality get in the way.

The problem isn't that I can't. The problem is that I won't.

World War Two. The largest conflict in human history. Unfathomably large numbers of people killed, wounded and abused. Unspeakable atrocities on all sides. If World War One was what lost us our innocense, World War Two certainly confirmed that there was no way back. The loss of civilian lives were not only collateral damage in this war; civillians were targets.

Reading about air raids, firebombings, Manchuria and - last but definitely not least - the atomic bombs, I feel obliged to remember that this is more than numbers and figures. It's about people. People who suffered. Who died.

And it's about people who made decisions.

Good people? Evil people? Somewhere-in-between people?

People we with time can laugh of, even if their decisions had extreme consequences.

Consequences I want to keep in mind, even if they make my days bleaker.

No one if neutral or objective in history. No one should be. Even if we need to understand more than one aspect; we're allowed (and, in my mind, bound), to have opinions and bias. You just need to be aware of it, and try not to let it affect your professional work too much.

If you want to carry the weight of the world too, you may watch the video below. It is long. But it should make you feel something. (And not just about atomic bombs, if you make it past the first ten minutes)

My sincerest appologies for forsaking "Writing Wednesday" for "Cruella pours her heart out (but still couldn't resist the photoshopped image of the 'big three'...)".

It's not just about reading; it's also about how you read

It's Reading Monday, and I got stuck in the old "but I haven't read any books this week"-dilemma, a frequent problem between me and this blog, I'm afraid. I have been reading, though. Just not what I'd normally want to write about in a Reading Monday post. But I guess it's time to make an exception.

Stuff about student rebellions.

It's for my job, you see. For the time being I'm a research assistant at my alma mater (I like that term. The University of Oslo really feels like family to me by now, even if "nourishing mother" may be stretching it too far...). I am - amazingly enough - doing the exact work I'm educated for. I'm pracising historianism. (Yes, it's a word. "Historianism" is what historians are doing when they contrary to what is common get a job relevant for their education. True story.) This is amazing because most of us end up doing work we're not educated for, but by default are qualified for anyway, because you also gain certains skills and mindsets through higher education, that makes you eligible for tasks a political scientist or sociologist or any number of other -ists could also do.

It's interesting, though, because even if I'm educated for this, I still feel a little lost.

It's like this. My field of expertise within "my field", is quite limited. If you ask me about "US peace initiatives in the Arab-Israeli conflict between 1956 and 1967" I'm on my home turf, and I will be able to give you a fairly detailed account. If you ask me questions about "the Middle East" or "American foreign policy", I'm still in my hometown, but I don't know my way around in every single street. If you ask me questions about "history in general", I'm not necessarily all that more knowledgable than the average person. We may still be located in my part of the world, but I'm still pretty much a tourist.

Since the topic of my current work isn't at all closely related to my own research topic, then, it feels a lot like I'm a tourist, trying to find my way in a whole new city. The only reason I don't get completely lost is that by now I have a certain idea how to explore new parts of the world. (Yes, I'm still in the same analogy...)

Through my education I've been taught to read with a critical eye. I've been trained to look for bias, to check references, and yes - I do read the footnotes. In addition there is a little "something" extra - a fingerspitzengefühl for history I've developed along the way. It takes a little longer because the topic is new to me. If I read a book about the Middle East I usually know a lot about it just from looking at the title, the author, or the bibliography. With this new topic I'm working on, I usually need to also read the introduction, look at a few chapters, and google the author. It takes longer. But I'm getting there.

I used to think that my field (or if you will, "my part of the world") - history "in general" - was fairly straight forward, and that anyone could do it if they set their mind to it. Anyone - or at least most people - can do it, but you do need those skills to do it properly.

I guess I've developed a new respect for my own profession through this job. For what it has done to the way I read.