Navigating America's Histories: The Importance of Understanding Our Past

Why is historical awareness so important in order to form a strong personal identity? What are the risks of a culture overly centered on safety and fragility?

Frank Furedi is an emeritus professor at the University of Kent and director of the think tank MCC Brussels. Frank is also the author of several books. His latest work is titled The War Against the Past: Why The West Must Fight For Its History, and he has also written How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in the Twenty-First Century, First World War: Still No End in Sight, Power of Reading: From Socrates to Twitter.

Greg and Frank discuss the disparagement of the past in contemporary culture, the influence of identity politics on historical interpretation, and the educational system's decreasing demands on students. They also discuss the decline of practical wisdom and the impacts of education on cultural values. Frank critiques the modern tendency to detach from historical legacies, highlighting the dangers of presentism and the moral devaluation of the past. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Understanding history beyond simplistic narratives

07:26: People say Martin Luther, who isn't the hero of mine, but nevertheless played an important role in the Reformation, was the antecedent of Adolf Hitler, that already in his authoritarian behavior, there were the seeds of what would happen in the 1930s and 1940s. And that kind of simplistic history means that you do not even actually understand what is unique and special about the Holocaust. What is the tragedy that we fell upon us? If you see that merely as more of the same, because then you forget about the Enlightenment, you forget about the incredible achievements of German culture. Someone like Heine, Beethoven, and some of the artistic sort of endeavors that existed there. And impoverish our own sensibility through doing something like that. And I think a mature individual learns to be critical of the horrible things that have occurred in the past whilst at the same time learned to valorize and affirm what were very positive contributions to human civilization.

The Renaissance as a positive way of viewing the past

05:01: The Renaissance is really about rebirth, and there's a very strong sense in which what they wanna do is they wanna reappropriate the best that existed beforehand. And, in the course of reappropriating it, what they want to do is to make it come alive within their own lifetime. And I think that's a really positive way of dealing with the past.

The transformative power of books

35:41: Books are important because it kind of demands an element of interaction between you and the author. And what happens is that, sort of as you're going through the pages and reading them, it has the potential to stimulate your sensibilities in a way that provides you with both an aesthetic element but also an intellectual element. I think what is really great about a book is that it is both something that stirs the emotion and, at the same time, makes you aware of the fact that there are problems with these ideas, these existentially difficult kinds of questions. Which basically means that you can, on a good day, come out a slightly different person than when you began that journey when you kind of started on the first page.

How inclusion and market forces are reshaping education

44:54: What the woke, idea of inclusion does is it fundamentally changes the culture of academic learning, because now what becomes important is the student rather than the subject. So you have what's called student-led learning, which I think is a travesty of any kind of intellectual engagement because in a real academic setting, you have a partnership between the academic and the students that have come in there. So I think it's both a cultural dilution of academic standards alongside the market-driven impulse. And it's the convergence of the two, which is why you have a situation where you have administrators, professional administrators, experts kind of becoming the best allies of the inclusion diversity merchants. It's almost like they got this unholy alliance of controlling the university through their coalition.

Show Links:

Recommended Resources:

• Phronesis
• Renaissance
• Dark Ages
• French Revolution
• Pol Pot
• Martin Luther
• Cicero
• Ancient Egypt
• Cleopatra
• David Lowenthal
• Thomas Hobbes
• Virginia Woolf

Guest Profile:

• FrankFuredi.org
• Professional Profile at MCC Brussels
• Faculty Profile at the University of Kent
• Wikipedia Profile
• LinkedIn Profile
• Social Profile on X
• Newsletter on SubStack

His Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• The War Against the Past: Why The West Must Fight For Its History
• How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in the Twenty-First Century
• First World War: Still No End in Sight
• Power of Reading: From Socrates to Twitter
• What’s Happened To The University?
• Therapy Culture
• Freedom Is No Illusion: Letters on Liberty
• On Tolerance: A Defence of Moral Independence
• 100 Years of Identity Crisis: Culture War Over Socialisation
• Politics of Fear
• Google Scholar Page
• The Guardian Articles