Reflection in History
Originally published in KAC’s March 2018 County Comment
When I met with my guidance counselor toward the end of high school, we discussed college and my future plans. During that meeting, I mentioned my interest in studying history. His response startled me. With a quick guffaw he asked, “Why would you do that?” I retorted that “those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it.” He again scoffed before changing the subject.
Despite the counselor’s discouraging comment, history has long held fascination for me. When I recently described the joy and importance of history to my young daughters, I used a flashlight analogy: “consider history as a flashlight in a dark room. You can use it to look at a person or an event, but you can only see a small part of it. The more you read, the larger your flashlight grows until—eventually—you can see a great deal more than you could at the start.” I am uncertain whether Lydia and Grace appreciated my observation, but they at least listened more politely than my former guidance counselor.
One reason history has remained an interest is based on the complexity of working with the Kansas Legislature. The nature of serving as an ambassador for counties means we cover subject matter ranging from elections to criminal procedures, taxes to agriculture, and everything in between. Improving laws and policies for any of these subjects is complex. To pursue better laws in each of these subjects can seem like a gargantuan task. Yet by studying history, we have a greater understanding of what to expect and how the different considerations might fit together in the end.
Last year, I read A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman. The author spends 27 chapters discussing the Middle Ages, and she covers everything from the chivalric code of knights to the development of castles to Europe's plummeting population once the Black Plague arrived. As I explored the Middle Ages, the tumultuousness of yesterday’s competing factions made me feel better about today's frustrations—albeit with a dose of caution at what could someday come.
As part of Tuchman's insights, she developed “Tuchman's Law.” The summary is in the introduction to A Distant Mirror, and it is particularly helpful for considering today's world affairs:
Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of the disturbance, as we know from our own times. After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening — on a lucky day — without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena. This has led me to formulate Tuchman's Law, as follows: "The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to tenfold" (or any figure the reader would care to supply).
Tuchman wrote her law in 1978, yet it seems just as fresh and relevant today. But it also leaves us with an insight that warrants consideration. If the mere existence of disaster prompts widespread concerns over societal ills, then we need to exercise caution in how we discuss those ills. Tuchman’s Law suggests an amplifying effect, so if leaders discuss the subjects without tact or civility, then the spiraling effect grows.
A longstanding truism is that victors write the history. We tell the stories of the past most often from the perspective of those who conquered and remained to record the events. But this also reinforces my flashlight analogy that a single record seldom tells the whole story. It also combines with Tuchman’s Law to highlight the power of the words we choose when speaking or writing about challenging subjects. The issues—particularly complex ones—are seldom black and white.
In the oft-quoted passage from James in the New Testament, the author notes “what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.” He observes that the tongue is also a fire with potential for great destruction. When the world seems filled with “strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists,” the citizenry will look to leaders at each level of government to see their example and hear their words—words that can either enrich or inflame. This is why knowing history is so vital.
Through the entire calamity in Distant Mirror, Tuchman also observed signs of hope. One such figure is Charles V the Wise, King of France from 1364 to 1380, who observed, “As long as knowledge is honored in this country, so long will it prosper.” If we learn our history and know how it propelled us to the present, we have at our disposal a body of wisdom that can shape our words and lend counsel for today.
Perhaps my guidance counselor was right after all in that I skipped the history degree and instead studied English and Political Science. Regardless of the foundation, those of us in government—particularly those helping craft and implement our laws—should maintain an eye on history as we look ahead at what is to come. When the world around us seems dark, it can help provide a light to proceed with confidence.
