The Importance of Reading History
Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here.
Today, I want to talk a little bit about history. First of all, if you like this channel please subscribe to it. I remind you that the transcripts, the audio and the video are available at LingQ as lessons. Because I know that many of you who watch these videos are not native speakers, I think my sort of rambling style where I don't write things down ahead of time and very often haven't really planned what I'm going to say makes it much like a conversation and I think conversations are, in fact, the easiest kinds of material to use for language study. Once we've gone beyond the beginner, brain dead, boring learner stuff and we want to get into authentic material, then a natural conversation is easier than more formal text. Getting to history now, I love reading about history.
In fact, there were some questions. Stephen Fisher asked: Are there any history books you would recommend or novels. There were also some other comments. When I referred to ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité', freedom, equality and fraternity of the French Revolution, one person said that all these revolutions were very bloody and scary and as a citizen of a former communist country he is scared of socialist revolutions. It all has to do with history… I love reading about history, I think history gives us a perspective.
We think we live in a violent time, so in terms of reading I would recommend Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature where he clearly documents that society has become less and less violent literally over the last 500 years and it's continuing to become less and less violent, despite the occasional flare ups and spikes such as our two World Wars in the twentieth century. It's interesting that very often this reduction in violence also seems to correspond to a reduction in religiosity, certainly in some of the books I've been reading recently here for Stephen Fisher's benefit.
For example, I read a very interesting book which described the life of Frederick the Great of Prussia and Bach. First of all, through the seventeenth century, that is the sixteen hundreds, Europe went through a period of tremendous violence largely caused by religion, or so it might appear on the surface. Then when you read the life of Frederick the Great, who was not at all religious, he was inspired by this sense of glory and was going to expand the boundaries of Prussia.
He was someone who was picked on by his father and his father was somewhat militaristic, so he was militaristic. So there's this desire for glory as a motive for violence, which is somewhat less today but still exists and we'll get that. For example, right now I'm reading a book that covers the year 1848, which was the year of all these revolutions in Europe and describes France in 1848.
The masses in France were very militaristic, they wanted a war. They were hankering back to the days when France conquered all these countries in Europe spreading the revolution and so forth. The revolutionary masses of France, even in 1848, 35 years after Napoleon had been defeated, were hankering for this past, this sort of nostalgia for glory. Also, I read a book quite recently on the Teutonic Knights and the sort of crusading by mostly German, but Western European (call them crusaders) into the Baltic to convert the Latvians and the Lithuanians to Christianity.
It's obvious when you read the wars and the battles at that time in history there was a lot of deceit, deception, lying, violence and the armies would just lay waste to the countryside. This was was the pattern right throughout, until very recently, that the armies would live off the countryside and kill, rape and loot at will. Today, of course, we see this violence in the Islamic government.
We see Russians streaming into Ukraine to fight. They're not sure, fight for the Orthodox Church, for Russia, against Obama, whatever. They want to go there to fight, so at some level there is this desire. Whether it be call them Russian jihadists, the jihadists in the Middle East or those militaristic French revolutionaries in 1848, at some level people want to fight for some strange reason; a certain percentage of them. It's also leaders.
To some extent, Bush's war on Iraq happened because he had the power to go in there. He has all these toys, this army, this force and so if people have power they're likely to use it. So, again, the more we read of history I question how much George Bush knew. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, I don't know. You hear some of the statements from people who are aspiring leaders. Like Trump, you really question how much he reads. I saw a statement from one of his advisors on foreign affairs called Page, who apparently said that Ukraine is like Quebec or something. Ukraine, part of Russia, is like Quebec, part of Canada, there is absolutely nothing similar between those situations, so I'm worried. Another example of sort of relative ignorance was when Putin, as I mentioned in my previous video, announces to his vast television audience in Russia that Süddeutsche Zeitung, which released the Panama Papers which implicated Putin as well as a whole bunch of other people, was owned by either the CIA or Goldman Sachs.
He subsequently disavowed the statement and said that he was misled by his press secretary. I ask myself, how can you have an environment (A) where the press secretary would say this to his president and (B) where the president wouldn't immediately say this is absolute nonsense? It all comes back to this idea that it's not necessarily just history, but I think it is important for people to read, to read widely to get a sense of proportion of what is likely historical behavior on the part of people and what is likely to be the reaction.
I, therefore, like reading on history. I read in different languages like Frederick the Great, as I said. I also was able to listen to a description of his life in Italian on [Insert Italian]. All I can say is read widely, Stephen Fisher. If there are things happening in the Balkans, I'll read up on the Balkans.
I'll find books on that subject. I've read some histories of Ukraine. For example, I just happen to have it handy, The Gates of Europe. When I listen to a lot of my [Insert Polish], of course you get a sense of the involvement of Poland with Lithuania and Ukraine. Go wherever your interest takes you. When I was learning Chinese, I read a lot of Chinese history. When I first got involved with French when I was only 18 years old, I was totally immersed in French history. There are so many books on history and if they can do them through language so much the better.
So just follow your interests and, of course, nowadays you can Google it, find it, download it onto your Kindle and away you go. So thank you for listening and just another ramble.
Remember, you'll be able to find this as a lesson, if you're learning English, at LingQ. You can check for the (l-i-n-k) link on how to get to our (L-i-n-g-Q) LingQ lesson. Thank you, bye-bye.