I think the press of History has this way of making the major political movements and governments and most social trends of a time sort of collapse? I mean, those with a historical focus and study behind a time know what was going on and can say why it matters (I think it does matter! I’m a history nerd! Hi!) but in terms of sheer cultural weight, like... there is a certain degree to which France the Amazing Multi-Government 19C sort of folds into “a time before a fully a democratic government” in the popular imagination-- it’s all a buncha kings, right, kings and Napoleons, it’s Whatever, it’s cultural Before Time , the chunk of time after the Americas Happened and before electricity,everything is The French Revolution or the great immense block of the Nineteenth Century
(I can see this happening with the 20th century from here, too, and it’s a Trip, even though I think it’s also somewhat useful and probably unavoidable! we all gotta Chunk some memories and concepts for daily use, even though it’s good to have detailed understandings on hand also; I am not tearing this down at all, I just sort of ...lack the terminology for the sense I’m trying to get at here, I think; the aggregated, felt sense of an era that comes up when a more specific understanding isn’t needed)
but the little lives of people just living? Trying to survive, finding themselves, growing up, finding love, losing love , friendships, family, the general mindset of young people hoping to change their society, even if we don’t understand exactly what that society is, the fear of abandonment, pop culture, fashion , these everyday things?
somehow those common, shared things have a way of UnCollapsing the past , of bringing back specific years and days and making them breathe again; it doesn’t matter if the people they’re happening to were “Important”, if they were powerful famous players in world history or forgotten ditch-diggers; it matters that they were people and if a story can bring that across then history starts to unfold in a living way
I’m very emotional about this today apparently
