Historical Imperatives and me

One of the music forums I participate in is focused on more theoretical discussions. Today a fellow I have run into before posted a longish article asserting that only the “classical” music of Christian Europe and some notable early 20ieth century pop writers like Cole Porter and Irving Berlin produced any music worthy of serious consideration. I expect that most of you, even without any detailed knowledge of musical history, realise what a crock that is. I made my (now almost routine) reply accusing the poster of academic elitism. I have nothing against anyone preferring to listen to pre-20ieth century European music or the music of Cole Porter, but to present this as if that is the only “good” music (and, by definition, everything else is garbage) is absurd.

This reminded me of a situation in my adolescence when I was taking a grade 12 history course in the evenings in an effort to graduate secondary school. (That was before I gave up on the idea of wasting any more time on high school and applied for and was accepted into a university without, what high school propagandists promoted as essential for getting anywhere in the world, a secondary school graduation certificate. I must be one of the very few high school teachers who never graduated high school—a situation my students thoroughly approved of.)

In any case, this was a course in 20ieth century world history. In one of the first classes the teacher drew a sketch on the board where he circled Greece-Rome then drew a westward arrow pointing to a circle labelled “Europe” and, from that circle another westward leading arrow to “North America.” He then extended the arrow and drew a heavy circle around “Vietnam.” That, he explained, was what the entire conflict in Vietnam at that time was about. They were resisting the inevitable historical westward march of “civilization” around the globe. I was outraged, even then at the tender age of 18.

Like my musical friend, the teacher was cherry-picking a few of his favourite places and then linking them together while ignoring everything outside of his somewhat narrow point of view. First of all, the Greeks and Romans did not discover civilization. Civilizations, as defined by having a common code of laws and procedures governing large numbers of people, are as old as, well, civilization itself. How can one ignore the civilization in Egypt that lasted more than five thousand years? Well, it didn’t fit the teacher’s “ever westward” idea. The “civilization” thing would have had to travel north and east to get to Greece, even assuming that that was its only stop. The Mesopotamian civilization survived a mere 2,500 years and the Indus Valley civilization lasted some 2,000 years by contrast.  Chinese civilization has been around for an estimated 9,000 years (though that is by inference and archaeological evidence; there are no written records from before about 1500 BCE). The Arab civilization was around before the Europeans got their act together. More recently we have had the Mayan civilization, the Aztecs, the great African kingdoms, and the civilizations that flourished in North America before the Europeans arrived. Let’s not forget Japan, whose history as a civilization is almost as old as China’s, and south-east Asia generally where many smaller civilizations grew and disappeared.

Oh, and compared to all these other civilizations, North America is a baby having survived a mere three hundred years so far. There is also the inconvenient fact that there was a timeout of approximately 1,000 years between the fall of Rome and the introduction of this brand of “civilization” into Europe during the Renaissance, making something of a mess of the idea of a continuous connection between ancient Greece and modern Vietnam.

But, none of these facts supported this teacher’s theory of historical imperative, and, so they were ignored. Neat. Using similar techniques we can “prove” just about anything we want to. I must be next in line to the British throne. All I have to do is ignore the tens of millions of people who have a superior claim to mine. Let’s see: the art forms of the folks who inhabited the Bering Strait area 10,000 years ago are the best the world has ever produced. I don’t have to strain my brain at all to ignore every other art form that the world has produced.

Any time someone tries to draw simple connections through the history of anything he is talking through his hat. The history of everything, from a family tree to the Austrian monarchy, from ship-building to knitting is a complex web of blind alleys, far-flung influences, coincidences, and dumb luck.

“Historical imperative” (or “my favourite music good; everyone else’s bad”) is a result of minimal knowledge and lazy thinking.