I find myself full of admiration for the people who put together these witty, all age friendly, largely accurate, summaries of history. I encourage you to view these two videos summarising (in barely 15 minutes, combined!) the rather notoriously hard to simplify history of World War 1, and hopefully you will agree they are both dense with information and give an overview that is so often lacking in education:
It also makes me feel that schooling in my life time, and probably before it, is not so great at the Big Picture when it comes to history and historical developments. I guess you could say, if you are a conservative, that the move away from teaching the Western canon is a key example of failure to give an overview: but I guess there are overviews, and then there are narrowly biased overviews which modern educationalists think are important to avoid.
It is a tricky area, but as I say, I am very impressed by those people who are trying to make learning more about complicated history more digestible.
For all the complaining about Youtube for learning purposes there is a wealth of valuable material. It takes time to find the good stuff but it is worth it. I hope teachers are making use of the resources. If not they need internet lessons.
ReplyDeleteI find WW! fascinating and its prelude.
ReplyDeleteDreadnought is one of my favourite books.
The reason we cannot get a grip on World War I is that we are not allowed to. A secondary reason is that the history often starts with the shooting of Franz Ferdinand. A third is that they only scratch the surface as to what went on behind closed doors. An investigation after the war focused on secret yet formal deals that the public didn't know about at the time. But thats just the first layer of the onion. In reality the causes of the war go back to a decision in the British Elites around 1985. It was a decision to lure Germany into starting a war. Starting a war in appearance when in reality it was the British Elite that had decided to go to war against Germans, after first setting up Germany to lose.
ReplyDeleteThe British elite wanted to destroy Germany by keeping France and Russia antagonistic towards her. But they also wanted to destroy the Russian Empire BY PRETENDING TO BE HER FRIEND AND ALLY. The Russian Empire was impinging on India, which was at the core of the British Empire. The Jewel in the crown. Whereas Germany was outperforming Britain at every turn.
Now here is where the menace of fractional reserve banking comes in: Britain had the resources to outperform Germany in fair and friendly competition. But it would have meant banking and land tax reform. It would have meant the "euthanasia of the rentier class" in the famous phrase of Keynes. (Yet without Keynesian methodology.) And thats what the parasitical elite could not abide. So Germany had to be destroyed. But of course the Germans put up such a fantastic fight that the British elite lost a great deal as well.
This sort of thing happens all the time. Prior to the outbreak of violence in the French revolution it came to a pass where the problems could have been solved by debt cancellation and land tax reform. But thats just a little bit hard for the bigshots. So violence becomes inevitable and is actively sought by the elite. And now we are in that time again. We could solve a great deal by nuanced debt cancellation, meeting Henry George part-way, money and banking reform, and ruthless cutting of Graebar's "bullshit jobs" in the public sector. (Not only in the public sector but the other reforms will take care of that).
But its all a little bit too hard, the international elites are actively seeking a new round of population reduction, and since we will not follow the truth, they will get it.