History Is Dangerous
Moria. You fear to go into those mines. The Dwarves dug too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dûm…
“History loves no one” my advisor told me. The truth has no favorites, every society is exposed. This reality can be frightening for the research historian. We have theories, thesis, all sorts of imaginations of how the past went down. Then the sources and evidence crash the party in our heads. We have to revise, or at-least we should revise and let the facts lead us. Moments in time have a life of their own. At our best, a historian is an interpreter, an analyst and a storyteller. But the story may take us down fearful roads and undesired conclusions. Yet, it is not Moria, where the dwarves of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth dug too deep in the mountains and awoke a monster they could not contain or defeat. The past is to be explored with a respectful reverence for its potential to shock, surprise and horrify. But it can also strengthen, uplift and brighten. Delve deep, with courage.
"The past is to be explored with a respectful reverence for its potential to shock, surprise and horrify. But it can also strengthen, uplift and brighten. Delve deep, with courage." And sometimes it does both at once.