History Is A Story We Keep Editing

Life can feel like it’s been split into rival camps: your job vs your faith, your friends vs your politics, your values vs your tribe. We’re not interested in pretending those differences don’t exist. We’re interested in proving they don’t have to end real friendship. We’re a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who actually like each other, and we start with the uncomfortable question: if we met today, would we still become friends in a world trained to sort people into teams?

From there we go straight into the messy middle of modern conversation: language. Why does a phrase like “persons experiencing homelessness” instantly signal a worldview? When does inclusive language help people feel seen, and when does it turn into a purity test? We try to hold the tension with humor and good faith, arguing that the right words matter less than the right actions, and that people deserve grace while language keeps changing.

Then we dig into history and the stories we inherit. John Steinbeck’s 1936 reporting in The Harvest Gypsies becomes a lens on migrant farm workers, corporate farming, and the quiet economics behind today’s immigration debate. We also wrestle with how history is told, why popular history feels so powerful, and how memory works like a copy of a copy that slowly rewrites the original. If identity is built on stories, what happens when someone tells a different version of America’s past?

Subscribe wherever you listen, share the show with a friend who disagrees with you, and leave a review so more people can find conversations built for common ground.

©NoahHeldmanMusic

https://livingoncommonground.buzzsprout.com

Transcript

Divided Lives And Common Ground

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Does it feel like every part of your life is divided? Every scenario, every environment, your church, your school, your work, your friends, left, right, conservative, liberal, religious, secular. It seems you always have to take a side. This is a conversation between a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who happen to be great friends. Welcome to Living on Common Ground.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

Do you think if we met today, we would still be friends? I don't know. But we're friends now.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

So what we want a few games. Y'all fools think that's something? Man, it ain't nothing, y'all. And you know what else? We ain't nothing either. Yeah, we came together in camp. Cool. But then we're right back here, and the world tells us that they don't want us to be together. We fall apart like we ain't a damn bit of nothing, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

How are you?

SPEAKER_03 1:17

Yeah, good.

The Wild List Of Topics

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Good. Yeah, it's uh you brought your list with you. Uh-huh. All right. Let's uh we talked about the one on the top already, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:26

Yeah, you can I could I'll read these and then you can uh decide what you think I meant by them. Because I have no idea on some of them.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Okay. I may not either.

SPEAKER_05 1:38

You definitely won't. Okay. It's because they don't make any sense. That's that's all right, let's see. Uh all right. So the the first topic was uh the Jesus non sequiturs. Yep. Second one we solved that problem. Yeah, we solved that. Second one is the midwit bell curve.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

I'm not familiar with that.

SPEAKER_05 1:56

Uh it's a meme. Um, but my my subtitle here is uh Can We Please Get Past Our Sophomore Year in College? Um third one is uh homeless, the homeless. When you talk about the homeless. Uh fourth one is foster kids.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

So people experiencing homelessness.

SPEAKER_05 2:14

Sure, sure, sure. Okay. Foster. Just need a hand up. That's all they need.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Foster, is that what you said? Foster kids, yep. Okay. I think it's interesting that uh go ahead. Go ahead. And then I'll say what I think is interesting. All right.

SPEAKER_05 2:26

Uh next topic uh women are the conduit men must create. Uh let's see, that's what is that? That's five. Six. What do we believe about history with the subtitle What Are the Implications? Okay. Uh let's see. Seven is uh climate panic. Let's go back 10 years ago. Okay. Uh eight, walls of sanctuary with walls of sanctuary with the subtitle Highlander. That one I know exactly what I meant.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

I have I have no idea. That one I that's near and dear to my heart. So far, they're all gonna need some unpacking.

SPEAKER_05 3:02

Yes. Some uh next one is uh Can atheists and fundamentalists get along uh with the subtitle What Can We Agree On?

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Oh, that's interesting because I want to know. I there I've got questions. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_05 3:15

Um because atheists can be fundamentalists, by the way. Sure. Uh fine. Okay. You know what? You know what, Jeff? All right. Uh next, next one is um I I put COVID with three exclamation marks. Why did Lucas move? All right. Um next one. Uh the next one is um can the rich truly be pirate uh pirates? Can the rich too truly be pious? With the subtitles, uh, what was Jesus's true teaching about that? And the three motivations, money, power, and prestige. Okay, which is a tribute to my late father-in-law who taught me about that.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Sounds good. No, they also have like fantastic topics that I want to dive into. A couple things. Um one is the the rich, can the rich be pious? Yeah. Um it made me think of just yesterday um on my Substack account, I did reflections on uh Lazarus. The the rich man and Lazarus, yeah. And I actually got a comment from someone I don't know um who also restacked it on his own page and gave me props, which I was really happy about. So that was good. Um and re-stacked it.

SPEAKER_05 4:35

Listen to you with the terminology.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

What can I say?

SPEAKER_05 4:38

That's the way basically a Gen Zer. Oh god. Because definitely Gen Zers use Substack a lot. Do they? No, shut up. I have no idea. I imagine I imagine Substack though to be a Gen X, pretty solidly Gen X type situation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

Well, I appreciate all of my paid subscribers. I gotta say that. Because at this rate, um, I could make as much as a uh um as a migrant farm worker in the 1930s in California was making a month, I could make that in a year on my Substack account. So yeah. Well, a little bit more. Uh I also think it's very interesting. This is what I was gonna say about the uh um the persons experiencing homelessness thing that you uh I would love to hear what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_05 5:27

Not even people, persons. I was gonna say the other the the other week, by the way, when you were Are you making fun of my the way I use language?

SPEAKER_02 5:35

Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_05 5:36

Um you were no, you were making the point that you can um you can tell you can kind of categorize people by the um terminology that they use. Absolutely. And you said if you use the term persons experiencing homelessness and what um which I use right, which um and what I thought was I had Krista and I had just been having this conversation, and um I had told her, actually, if a person uses the term persons instead of people, I already know. If you use the word persons, what's wrong with the word persons? There's nothing wrong inherently with anything. I'm just saying I know. I get it, I know.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

Did you see the look I gave you?

SPEAKER_05 6:18

Uh-huh. Yeah. Um in this audio medium.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

I know. So uh, did you see what I gave you to read?

SPEAKER_05 6:24

Did you guys? I did, and I'm actually I appreciate it. I am gonna read it. I will read it with my eyeballs.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Have you ever heard of it? It's the so what I gave Lucas to read is called The Harvest Gypsies, and it was a series of seven articles that were printed in a San Francisco newspaper in 36. Is that right?

SPEAKER_05 6:42

That's what it says, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

By our favorite communists, by my by one of my favorite authors, John Steinbeck, who by the way, I was just doing a little bit of uh uh reflecting today. Yeah, and so far this year I've read written eleven uh I've read 11 uh different publications of his. Cool.

SPEAKER_05 7:02

So no, I'm excited. I appreciate it. I am gonna read it. Yeah, I will read it and I will uh give my commentary on it.

Language Labels And Good Faith

SPEAKER_02 7:09

It's interesting. The language, like I think that's an interesting point. And I so let's talk about history for a second. Let's go to that one. Okay. Is that all right? Yeah, it's great. Um, it's interesting because you read Steinbeck in that in those articles, and some of the um terminology that he would use, I think this also connects to what we're talking about with per uh, someone who uses the word persons instead of people. And um, and then understands that persons have experiences that don't mean that that's who they are. Um okay. So um anyway, he uses he uses phrases and language he himself is coming across as a very progressive person in the articles he's writing, right? I mean that and that that's the reason for leveling the accusation against him as of being a communist, or it's not necessarily a negative accusation as we talked about a few episodes ago. It's just a um Yeah, I'm mostly saying it tongue-in cheek.

SPEAKER_05 8:05

I'm saying it tongue-in-cheek at this point.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Because yeah, I I'm I'm by strictest definition, no, I can see not as a well, I yeah, and I would even go so far. I think where we landed, just to kind of refresh, is that as a political position, no, but as a social uh sort of socially, yes.

SPEAKER_05 8:22

Yeah, he's really close to it, but I don't I I think he probably would have actively rejected the label, and I think that's fair.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

I yeah, I and I think I agree with that. Um, but he definitely is a social progressive. There's there's you can't deny that. But if if he were to use the language that he uses in this in these articles today, he would be blasted, just torn apart by the social progressives today. Yeah, I mean, because he would be accused of being a racist, of course, uh a classist, whatever, you know, um, all of the things. And um, and so that's where I do think that we need to give each other a little bit of um grace when it comes to the language that we use and try to hear what someone is saying, not the words that they're using.

SPEAKER_05 9:09

Yeah, I mean, uh I think I think the topic's really it's interesting, and if if it can be talked about in good faith, I think it's fun and interesting.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

Uh what topic is that?

SPEAKER_05 9:21

Uh the topic of using the correct, the quote unquote and scare quotes correct language. Um, I think that um I know of and have listened to and read plenty of progressives who can talk about that in good faith um and joke about it. And like I there's a comedian that I like who's he's pretty pretty left leftist. But I mean, I repeat myself, he's a comedian.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

Um who uh there's isn't isn't what's his name? Rob no, what's his name? Rob um he was in a lot of the shows with uh um Adam Sandler. Yeah, yeah, I know you're talking about what's his last name?

SPEAKER_05 10:09

He's a conservative, Rob uh Reiner. No.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

No, Reiner's the he was on All in the Family. It's it's like that. He's gotten himself in a lot of trouble because he's actually a conservative comedian. You you only get in trouble if you're conservative.

SPEAKER_05 10:24

You never get in trouble if you're liberal. That's that's so not true. That is such a matter of perspective. It's so true. Anyway, that's not my point. My point, that wasn't my point.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

My point was we're gonna make our we're we're slowly making our way to the topic that you have of the history one.

SPEAKER_05 10:37

My point is that this um this comedian who I really like, he he has this bit about how uh he knows all of the the right um uh the right language, and is he has a friend who like is very conservative. And this is his to this is his bit. He's conservative, he says all the wrong things, whatever. And he said, um there's try he there's this he recounts this instance of um being in New York and a trans woman falling in front of a a car and his friend jumping out, grabbing her, throwing her back, saving her saving her life. And as as she walks away, he he says something like, See, that's why men shouldn't be wearing heels, right? And everyone goes, Oh, and he goes, Yes, I know, terrible. Except what I would have done is go watched her get hit by a car and went, that woman is dead, right? The whole point, his whole point, the joke being, I know the right words, I wouldn't have done the right thing, right? Right. And so, um, you know, again, I think that if we can joke about it and talk about it in good faith, um, and for people who, you know, get irritated about myself included, about having to use the quote unquote right words, recognize that I do the same thing, I have words that I choose, I have, you know, I do the same thing, you know, then I think uh I uh I I think that's a conversation that's interesting and uh and can be talked about and it's fine.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

That's fine. And I I can't help but wonder if everyone just kind of gets a little fed up with it at times.

SPEAKER_05 12:30

I think sometimes, because I think that's why you get like more progressive people at some point going like, okay, come on, you don't have to like get up, you know, you don't have to talk about every single term, and you know, yeah. I do think that that's true. But but I also I do think if somebody uses the term persons, I kind of already know. Sure. I mean, I've never I'm not going to now this is interesting because I don't judge people for using the word people. Yeah, that's that's that's big of you.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

That's nice. I use the word people.

SPEAKER_05 13:05

Well, okay, so um I um have not ever uh integrated the word enslaved people. See, if you're gonna say enslaved, you're gonna say persons, though. I almost said it. You gotta say enslaved persons. Yeah, when you when you used people, I was a little shocked. I know, it's weird. I still say slaves, and it's not because I think that that defines them as a person, right? I understand exactly what people are trying to do. Yeah, I understand exactly what people are trying to do and trying to accomplish, and that's all fine. Also, I've just never integrated it. And part of it is my temperament, part of it is if I can sense someone is telling me to do a thing, you're gonna want to not do it. I'm like, I'm just gonna not do it out of spite, and that's probably not great. That's ego, but that just is what it is.

SPEAKER_02 13:56

Let me see if I can find one of the terms that Steinbeck uses in here, real quick, because I read it and I was like, that is that's really interesting. Um oh, he refers to Filipinos as little brown men. And this is an article. This isn't a this isn't a novel. No, it it's it's originally okay. Here, I'll just read the cover. It says seven articles originally published in the San Francisco News from October 5th to October 12th, 1936. And what he's doing is he's he's writing, he's writing about the social situation that's being caused by the influx of um Midwest. He calls it the Middle West, but the Midwest. Um, and he very clearly states the white American that is coming in and that needs to be treated with greater respect and is going to demand greater respect than the previous peon class, is what he calls it. I think that's what he calls it. The peon class.

SPEAKER_05 14:58

But my point is these are these are articles, these aren't fictional novels.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Oh no, these are articles.

SPEAKER_05 15:03

And he that's important because then then it's like then it's his because you can have a it's his language, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. Is that if that's your point, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Because you can have like a Cormac McCarthy that writes uh Blood Meridian, and it's I'm reading that, and Judge Holden has got me all sideways. He might be the best character ever written. It's amazing like he writes he says something in and I know I know we've digressed here. Every few pages he says something that is But he said like there is one that has stuck with me and I keep trying to process like what does he mean? Uh-huh. What is he saying? Uh-huh. And it has to do, I wish I could I've I've written it so many times now in different things that I'm like it has to do with the the twil the the dawn like oh gosh, I forget something about the dawn of anyway.

SPEAKER_05 15:58

The point is that in that book, it's a period specific book. So when he's using racial slurs, direct racial slurs, it doesn't mean it's period specifically, it doesn't mean that Cormac would not.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

No, but this is this is Steinbeck just being Steinbeck. Right. So that's that's more important. So yeah, so like when he talks about here about the um how it it's written about the time that um the Philippines becomes an uh an actual nation. Territory. Yeah, and well, yeah, and then the Filipino, now they're gonna be um they're they're going to try to uh repatriate them. In other words, they're getting ready to deport anyone that is Filipino. Okay, not that they have a place to send them. From the US, yes, yeah, I got it. And he talks about how they try to repatriate the Mexicans and the Chinese and the Japanese, and right, and um, but he talks about how the Filipino specifically, and um, but it's interesting that he himself, you can tell that he himself does believe that the white American deserves a better treatment and is actually a better class than the persons before them. Sure. Um and uh so it's it's just interesting. Um but uh I think you'll enjoy a read. You'll enjoy it if nothing else, as a uh from a historical perspective.

Steinbeck Migrant Workers And Power

SPEAKER_05 17:19

Yeah, I I'm I'm looking forward to it. Because I like to think also about what's going on at that time. This is 1936, deep in the depression.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Oh, absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:29

Mid depression, which is obvious because that's what he wrote about.

SPEAKER_02 17:33

But um and he he describes a few like he describes a few specific families and their situations and stuff. But here's one of the things that I thought about, and and hopefully this will connect. I don't know what your topic is about history yet, but one of the things is as I read that, I thought to myself, we're not really much different today than than we have been when it comes to farming in particular, right? Um you have these huge, because what had happened is the way I understand it, is you had farms that were about a hundred acres or so, and and you had the family that owned it, and then you might have a few people that live on the family to help them, and then you have the dust bowl. And then in the in the wake of that, and this has already been going on in California prior to even the dust bowl, is that you have these large corporations or these really rich individuals that are buying up and combining all of the farms into one massive thing, right? And then in addition to the dust bowl, then you also have the development of some farming equipment that reduces the amount of hands that you need, but you still need those particular pickers in California when it comes to grapes and and like oranges and the the um you know, just the cotton even still over there because um, but you've got what else do you have over there? You know, asparagus up in your old area and all of that. And so they still need a lot of the people to to pick all that. But all these people that had been farmers are now losing all of their land and they're having to go and they're having to do this, and so you have all of this labor. And the only way that food can continue to be affordable to the average, quote unquote average American, is you have to constantly, and of course, you are worried about your profit margin. Um, I don't begrudge anybody that, but and I also think that there's nothing wrong with trying to figure out what's the way that we can keep pro the food costs down, and all of these things are way more complicated than we want to make them, the way that they're intertwined together, right? Um, but the best way for that the way they see this is the best way to do it is flood, flood the areas with more workers than you need, of course, so that you can then pay 14 cents an hour or even some of them are paying by the bucket that you fill. Yeah. And then if you bruise it, they're gonna, well, this whole bucket doesn't count, right? And um and so that if you're a very good migrant worker at the time, you may be able to make up to four to six hundred dollars a year to feed your family, but it keeps the food costs down for the rest of the country by doing it that way. And I can still make my profit margins. All right. We still do this today.

SPEAKER_04 20:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

Absolutely, right? And we and we pretend to bitch and moan about immigration, but we have to understand that our very system is dependent upon the migrant farm worker that we still want to be able to underpay.

SPEAKER_05 20:29

I mean, I just uh just to put a fine point on this, uh people who um say things like America they're they're doing jobs Americans won't do, what they're really saying is we need to have we have to have an underclass of illegal workers who are outside the system so that they can be treated unfairly, otherwise we will not have the prices that we want. Yes. That's what people are saying. Yes, we must be able to treat them unfairly.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

But we would never actually say this, we would never say those words. We wouldn't say that out loud. Steinbeck says Steinbeck calls it out in different language, but that's what he calls out in this in these articles, is that there's a realization of it. His I it seems to me like his biggest concern, though, is that that class is actually now white Americans. Yeah, he didn't seem to have problems. He didn't seem to I I I love Steinbeck. Uh he didn't seem though though to have problems with it when it was Japanese, Chinese, yeah, Mexicans, Filipinos.

SPEAKER_05 21:45

And the thing is, you can um you can be mad at him for that. Um disparaging of him for that. It's and I and I would.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Yeah. Today I would. But I gotta be honest, at the time, I probably would have read his article. Article as a white man in the United States and but and not had not batted an eye at what he had to say. I'm sure that as a product of that culture in that time, and who I like, I'm sure, okay, for example, my grandpa reads that article and he's like, Steinbeck's got a point. Well, I just I you know I Or he's even mad at Steinbeck because, well, you know. Because he's a communist. Yeah, he may have my grandfather may have thought about Steinbeck as a communist.

SPEAKER_05 22:32

Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

Uh you know, I um and I love my grandfather, and he was one of the most gracious people. But my point is that it's easy for us now to look back on history and say, I wouldn't have done that. I would have been better. But that's not fair because we're not in that particular situation, and we're not we didn't grow up. I mean, all of the decisions, all of the things that we do, we're products of our environments, right? Um, and uh, and so we we live in a completely different world than 1936.

SPEAKER_05 23:12

Yeah, sure. Yeah, we do. Um, it is a different world. It's relatable, I think, if you but it it's gonna take it, it takes a lot of um in my personal opinion, it takes a lot of study of that era um and and uh kind of a uh suspension of judgment, I think.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

That's how I feel about reading the Bible, by the way.

SPEAKER_05 23:38

What's that?

SPEAKER_02 23:38

We have to do the same thing. Suspend like like it's very easy for us to read the Bible and say, Oh, I would have been the good Samaritan. Sure. No, you wouldn't have. Right.

SPEAKER_05 23:50

No, you would have had to I mean that one in particular, the whole point of it is that nobody is.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Right.

SPEAKER_05 23:55

Because we the whole point of it is the people that you know are the good people are the ones who passed them by. The person you know is the bad guy. Is the one that you're right, yeah. So if you're progressive, it's a it's um, you know, pick someone, it's not vanity. It's a mega kid. It's someone with a mega hat on walked by and made sure that that guy was taken care of. Yep. It it's it's whoever you know is the problem. And if you're a mega person, it's the libtard. It's the libtard, it's the it's the blue hair, it's the antifa kid, whatever. Um, yeah, it's that's the whole point. It's the same point, I think. What I really like is so far we've been able to offend just about everybody. Perfect. Wonderful. I'm trying, I'm trying, man. I wrote all of these hoping that they would they would do something like that.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

All right, give me the history thing.

SPEAKER_05 24:41

Have I have I missed your point? No, I don't know what my point was with the history. I actually don't know.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

Read the history one again. Because I when I heard it, I thought this was all related, and I just want to make sure. They're not, they were just random thoughts. All the things we've talked about, I felt like was relating to that.

SPEAKER_05 24:56

I said, what do we believe about history and what are the implications? I don't think I write more about it. I think we're talking about that, though. The imp like probably because I'd had a bloody Mary and I was flying. One all right, settle down.

What History Is Actually For

SPEAKER_02 25:11

All right, just asking. You could have said yeah. I don't want to lie on national TV. Wouldn't that be great? Um okay, so what what well let me ask you, what do you believe about history?

SPEAKER_05 25:25

Yeah, so that I I think maybe what I was getting at is um that you can when when I was in undergrad, my very first, uh, the one who is the the the professor that I credit with um the being the reason that I became a history major, Professor Caldwell, um, she talked at one point about how you have to be careful about all the new history books that come out, because they constantly come out um about the same topics. And you and you have to be careful about the ones that that seem to have some brand new idea about a topic that you already know. Not because they're wrong, but because you have to know that every year, if you take any historical topic, there's a billion books that come out about that topic every year. So the only way that you distinguish yourself is by saying, actually, did you know that Abraham Lincoln was gay or whatever? You know what I mean? Like you have to come up with some sort of like actually, Abraham Lincoln wanted the Confederacy to win and was trying to get the Confederacy to win. And here's my argument, you know what I mean? Right. That's that's how you distinguish yourself from the pack. Um, and so what when I'm we think we have an idea. Everyone, everyone, including myself, thinks we have an idea about what the past was like. Some sort of narrative going into the past, all the way back to whatever you think the beginning of history is, whether you think it's four and a half billion years ago with the Big Bang, um, or you think it's 6,000 years ago with creation. No matter what, you have a you have some idea. I think that's what I was, I think I was thinking of like um what what's your vision of what the past actually was, how long it was, what like human history looked like, that kind of thing. And then what would be the implications from that? You know, if you really did think humans were placed down by God in the form that we're in now, right? And all species were and like it, what would be the implications of that versus you know, the for instance, the the picture that I have, which is that we're animals that you know have evolved over millions of years and blah, blah, blah. Um, but but it's I just uh this is why I find studying history so endlessly fascinating, and I can't imagine ever not being fascinated with it, even with the same topics. Number one, there's effectively an infinite amount of topics, and they're all better stories than any novel I've ever read, right? Um all of them. I l I have history podcasts on my phone that are um about business history, like one called Business Wars, and it's just about competitions between different corporations that have happened throughout the year. It's fascinating, it's amazing, you know. Um there's all different types of topics, but then even the same like I'll never get tired of um of listening to and reading about and learning about the Roman Republic because there's there's always gonna be some different way of of looking at it, some different perspective, and that's gonna change how I think about then, about now, about in between, you know, all of that.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

Yeah. So a lot of what we read in our about history is actually not just this is what I'm hearing, that it's not just dates and facts, but it's interpretation of the dates and facts being presented as the history.

SPEAKER_05 29:32

The dates and facts themselves, many times, if not always, are interpretations themselves. And secondly, yes. I I I don't see any point. That was another thing that Professor Caldwell did. This is a college course. Maybe there's some people who would listen to this and be like, this is the softening of the new, you know, the younger generations or whatever. But um she always she had a rule that when we had uh tests, um, if we didn't get a date right uh or some you know, specific fact right, most of the time she wouldn't, if we got in the general ballpark, she's fine. Uh what we always had to have was what's the significance of that? Why does it matter?

SPEAKER_02 30:22

That's interesting because when I I I love history. I'm probably not as uh as well read or studied as you in that. Um, but I've I was never good at memorizing dates. And but I could I could explain or I could process what were what were the events that led up to that and what seemed to be some of the um the the you know the the cultural social things that were taking place in that time that the context. Yeah that I was always good at that. Um, but to be able to say on such and such a date this thing happened, I wasn't very good at that.

SPEAKER_05 31:09

Yeah, man. I mean, that is the tradition that dates back to humans sitting around a fire talking about the battles, the hunts, the stars, the gods. Oh I mean, that's history. Yeah, we tell stories. It's just our stories. Um there there are actually there's two different types of historians uh generally speaking. There's academic historians and popular historians. Almost every single historian that you or I have ever heard of, certainly anybody who's not really into history that has ever heard of, they're a popular historian. They're historians that they write history for the stories for lay people. Then there's academic historians, they write histories, and this is an entire genre. If you went and looked for it, you'd be like, how are there this many books from these people who I've never heard? Like they're they're completely obscure. They're not writing for you. They're um they're like the science behind it, you could think of, kind of. Academic historians write for other historians. That's it. They're not writing for the public, they don't care if the public ever reads well, they probably care, but anyway. Makes money. But I but their job is snoozers. It doesn't make money, that's the point.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

Yeah, no, I mean saying if the public wants it, that would help you make money.

SPEAKER_05 32:31

Yeah, and that's why that's why all academic historians are jealous of public historians or uh popular historians.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

Yeah, um I prefer, yeah. No, I I I like the story. I'm reading right now called Um, hold on, let me go over here real quick. Destiny of the Republic. Have you heard about this by Candace uh Millard? No. Um this is an example of the story telling, like storytelling of history. It is about uh James Garfield. Okay, and it goes back to when he was young, growing up in Ohio and the whole thing. But what she does is she also tells the story of um Gateau? Is that I forget how to pronounce his name. It's a French name. The one that the guy that actually ended up assassinating uh Garfield. Uh-huh. And so she tells his story and his background.

SPEAKER_05 33:20

Is Garfield the one assassinated by an anarchist? Was he an anarchist?

SPEAKER_02 33:24

No, he um he was insane. Okay. And he um he believed that it was God that wanted Garfield dead. Sure. Because he was um, and it goes into the whole story about like the different factions within the Republican Party at the time. Okay. And you had like the Grant group that really enjoyed being able to um, I forget what they called them, and then the ones that sort of wanted to um well, the the progressives and the conservatives within the Republican Party, and Grant's group was uh the conservatives, they wanted to keep things just the way they were, and they were profiting from it with the patrol to system patronage, yep. And then you had you had Garfield and that group that wanted to reform it and that it needed to be merit-based if you're gonna get appointments and stuff like that, right?

SPEAKER_05 34:12

Until they get in. Uh yeah, this is the administrative uh kind of technocrats. This is the the uh like I forget what she late 19th century um type progressive.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

Yeah, this is 1880, yeah, is when I think he got elected in 1880. Yeah. Because he he was a general, well, he became a general during the Civil War. Uh anyway, but this is the example of storytelling, she weaves in Alexander Graham Bell into the whole thing. Sure. And and as I'm reading it, I'm like, how does she do? Like, I become in I'm just like enthralled with the story of it. Yeah. Because I'm a little familiar with the history, yeah. Right. But the story is what's really grabbing me.

SPEAKER_04 34:55

Yep.

Memory Narratives And Identity

SPEAKER_02 34:56

Which then brings me to the thing I said I wanted to talk about at the end of the last episode. I think it relates, is that memory, which is history, right? Um, is simply the stories we tell ourselves to support the narrative that we want to believe. Sure. And I think that's true about history, right? So to your point of how did you say it again?

SPEAKER_05 35:19

Um what are the implications? What do we believe about history?

SPEAKER_02 35:22

Yeah, and and then what so yeah, what are the implications based on what we believe? I think that we believe about history based on what we want the implications to be. Yeah, that's probably true.

SPEAKER_05 35:34

There's probably some truth to that.

SPEAKER_02 35:35

Yeah, so like for example, I want to be a particular type of person. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_05 35:39

So when I think about my own personal history, myself as this or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 35:43

Yep. And so as I think about my own history, uh-huh, my history seems to be remembered in such a way and even told in such a way that it's inevitable, right? Quote unquote. Yeah. Just inevitable that I would become the very person that I want to be now. Sure. Right? Oh, sure. Like I'm I'm writing right now, I'm I'm working, I'm trying to, I'm trying to um you you me you mentioned novels. So everything I've written so far has been like um what I would call nonfiction, right? It's it's just re biblical reflections and commentary and stuff like that. Yeah. Um, I'm trying to re actually work on a novel right now based on Gil's life. Okay. Um, but I've also started doing some writing on the side about my own, and one of the things I wrote about was these memories that I have of uh faded jeans with patches and bare feet, and like I described this whole thing. Well, that's because that's kind of how I envision myself today as that type of person who you know, and so of course I made my uncle that type of person because I idolized my uncle growing up. And so, of course, my uncle would have been the ideal of what I want to be. Um, was he that? I don't even know if my uncle was really that. And or if you asked his kids, obviously it would be a different story too. So I guess all that to say is I think when we think about history, we tell the history in the way that we become most flattering or supportive of who we want to be, either as an individual, as a community, as a country, right? Like if if the uh if the if the Confederacy had won the Civil War, the way the stories of the con of the history the the way the stories of the Civil War would have been told today would be completely different.

SPEAKER_05 37:40

The ways the story, the the way that the story of the Revolutionary War oh, and the ear and the early all of that would be completely different as well.

SPEAKER_02 37:49

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 37:50

We we add in ideas everywhere, yeah, for for sure.

SPEAKER_02 37:56

Well, and then that goes back to language, and because particular thing, especially during the time when people actually still remember the history, the language that we use is a is an attempt to capture the story. Sure. Right? So, like for example, sure. That's again. So again, civil war again. People in the south, it's a war of northern aggression. That's the language they're trying to use, right? Um War between the states, right? And so all of these, all so even the language that we use is trying to shape the history.

SPEAKER_05 38:32

Lincoln liked calling it the rebellion because there is no actual Confederacy that doesn't exist. They are rebel states. Yep. The union never split. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You've um you've heard the uh the psychological phenomenon of memory where when we remember something, what we're actually doing is remembering the last time we remembered it. Have you heard of this? Mm-hmm. It's very interesting, and it's there's a lot of studies that have supported this. As far as I know, it has not been debunked. This is this is still, I think, uncontroversial psychological kind of foundational um ideas. That um that when you're remembering something, it's like a copy of a copy. So you're remembering the last time you remembered it. That's what you're actually doing. So at some point you get so far away from it you don't even remember the actual thing. So it's always a game of telephone. It's a game of telephone that you don't know that that it's impossible to know that it's happening because it happened so slowly, the changes happen so slowly. Um it is constantly being affected by backwards projection. So this uncle that you're talking about, the thing is you can be aware that you might be remembering him in a particular way because you want to identify with him. Um, and maybe he was a different way, but you idolized him, and so but what I think is interesting is that you can't really know if you've always idolized him. Maybe, and and you know, sometimes you can see the change. I can give you an example in my own life. Sometimes you can see the change where your feelings about the person have changed, and now it's tough to remember when you actually when you felt completely different about that person. You've always been at war with East Asia. We've, you know, we've we right.

SPEAKER_02 40:37

And so um there um there's a now I'm thinking about the book 1984.

SPEAKER_05 40:44

Yeah, that's the um, that's the point. And the the point isn't uh the point of that aspect of 1984 is not just the government does it top down and forces everyone. They don't force everyone at the point of a gun. Everyone knows instinctively that their memories have changed and they actually have always hated East Asia. They don't need to be convinced, they always have. Now, some there's always gonna be some spectrum of people. Some people won't be able to make that shift, but that's okay. That's the exception. Those are the those are the marginal people, right? The um the like the main character in 1984. They just have to be carved off. Every time you shift, you just have to carve off a little bit, but it's always gonna be half a percent. That's fine, right? The vast majority of people can shift no problem, right? Because we do it to ourselves constantly. There's a person in my life, in my childhood, that I grew up with, an adult that I grew up with, and I know that I had that I knew he was a bad guy growing up. And that has shifted over the years, and now I absolutely think of him as like just a guy trying to do his best that I actually had a lot of really good experiences with, and I credit him with uh uh teaching me a lot of things, and I feel um, I feel indebted to him in some ways. There's some parts of myself that I see that I got from him.

SPEAKER_02 42:19

Okay, that was my that was gonna be my question. Uh-huh. Right. So do you change me? Talk me to hunt, taught me to camp, right? So you change you, you, you, and I'm not even saying you do it intentionally.

SPEAKER_05 42:31

I think you can't do it intentionally.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

Um, but I would I would suggest that it's because it has to do with the way that you want to see yourself. And so you have to, and you have to mentally, and again, not intentionally, but you have to mentally change that memory.

SPEAKER_05 42:55

Yeah. It's like you're doing the copy of a copy and it's continuing. It's a continual copy of a copy of a copy. Just imagine that continues to copy because there's something.

SPEAKER_02 43:07

There's something there.

SPEAKER_05 43:09

That's the that's the the uh the other picture that you start sliding into that process of having the copy of the copy. You start sliding that into the sides of it until you've completely changed the picture that you had. Yeah, but you couldn't have known that because it's something that's happening naturally.

SPEAKER_02 43:31

Or think about if you ever have you ever taken a photocopy or have take taken a picture and made a photocopy of it, and then and then instead of like all of a sudden you don't have that photo, like you don't have the photo anymore, all you have is a copy, so you make a copy of that. Right. And it eventually, if you keep if you just keep throwing that away, eventually it's just gonna be so pixelated you're not even gonna remember what the first picture looks like.

SPEAKER_05 43:51

That's my yeah, that's my point.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 43:53

That's exactly my point. Yeah. And if you add into that process, the outside in Influence of the picture you want of yourself that starts influencing that that process that you're talking about there, then you can have that picture completely change and you won't even notice it.

SPEAKER_02 44:10

And then that explains why some people get angry when the hit when when history isn't when someone else remembers something differently. Or when a different people group people, uh a different people group tell the story differently.

SPEAKER_05 44:29

Yeah, because it means something about you that they're saying.

Retelling America Without Erasing

SPEAKER_02 44:32

Well, think about okay, and let's look at remember uh Mark Charles from last year, right? We we had an opportunity to speak with him. He's trying to retell the American narrative. And he's getting a lot of pushback because it's not the story that we've told ourselves that props up who we believe we are.

SPEAKER_05 44:58

Yeah, I what I would suggest in a situation like that is I would prefer the story. This is my preference, I would prefer the story to be told to to to say, here is a here is a different perspective. Um not we have to throw out the first perspective. That's that's what I would prefer. And when I hear those different stories, and I I I listen to these books, the these historians who who do this kind of thing, I will I will listen to them, and if I feel it's it's hard because sometimes I'm like, it's not in good faith, and I don't, and it, you know, it does irk me and whatever, you know. But um it's 100%, for instance, it's 100% fair to say, to point out the fact that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, these people own slaves, and that that is you that that you cannot run away from that. And that the South dominated, the slave-holding South dominated the very first part of our um of our US government, right? There's a whole point of the three-fifths clause to try to limit their power because they had so much power. That is important, but also you gotta, I think the question is relevant to say, okay, Thomas Jefferson tried to get into the Declaration of Independence, for instance, the idea that slavery was evil and an abomination. Uh, Thomas Jefferson uh worked to abolish the out the slave trade, not slavery in general, but the slave trade, right? Um, so the question could be asked, how could the same person own slaves and also be working and also seem to hate slavery? And I think that's a great question. And I want to sit with the question and take it seriously and not go, well, it's because he well, it's because he lied.

SPEAKER_02 47:07

It sounds like you have uh a book to write. So plenty of people have written much better books than than I would. That would be good. Um I think I think we covered the topic. All right. I feel like we are in agreement that um uh history uh more than anything is not just facts.

SPEAKER_05 47:30

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 47:31

Absolutely. And um and that uh Okay. I don't need to reiterate everything we said. I don't want to reiterate everything we just said. Yeah, because we just talked for 46 minutes and I don't want to do a 46 minute summary. All right, all right. Fair enough. All right, thanks. See you next week.

SPEAKER_00 47:51

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