Reading David Andress’ thought-provoking new book Cultural Dementia*, on the ways that the anger and resentment of much contemporary politics in the UK, France and USA are founded in confused, self-serving and largely imaginary ideas of national pasts, I’m inevitably reminded of Thucydides, and his denunciation of the Athenians’ unwillingness to make any effort to enquire into the truth of the past but simply to accept the first story the hear – especially, we may surmise, if it flatters their sense of themselves and their place in the world, like the story of the tyrannicides that served as a foundation myth of democracy. The duty of the historian – the theme that I’m lecturing on in Toronto this week, as it happens – is to struggle to uncover the truth of things, to treat everything critically, to make no compromises for the sake of personal loyalties or entertainment, to acknowledge ambiguity and complexity, and try to help others to come to terms with it.
One example, which chimes with Andress’ emphasis on the role of imperialism in underpinning the now taken-for-granted prosperity (relative) and “sense of entitlement to greatness” of these benighted countries today, is Thucydides’ subtle presentation of the Athenian empire. We’re left in no doubt of the dependence of Athenian power and wealth on its suppression and control of other peoples, of the lengths they will go to to protect their privilege, of their relentless logic of deterrence through violence and intimidation and their self-serving justifications – anyone else would do the same if they had the chance, but currently we’re on top so you can suck it.
One way – probably the conventional way, but I haven’t checked – of reading such passages is to take them as a reflection of Athenian thinking; they accept imperialism and its consequences, and are inured to the concomitant violence, in a way that we moderns are far too squeamish to do. But I wonder. It’s naive to take the speeches in Thucydides as exact transcripts of what was really said; it’s downright idiotic to assume that they reflect his own views. Rather, they serve to reveal and highlight things that might otherwise pass unnoticed, so that we are forced to think about them: the motivations (stated and unconscious) of individuals, the moods and inclinations of the masses, the underlying dynamics of events and the way the world works.
At the beginning of the Melian Dialogue, the Athenians declare that they’re not going to bother to justify their Empire in the usual manner, in terms of their service to the Greeks or the favour of the gods or anything else; it’s just about power. Clearly, in the real world – not when Thucydides is staging a confrontation in order to reveal the true nature of their rule – those are precisely the sorts of arguments they would use to their subjects and to neutrals. But perhaps they are also the arguments they use to themselves, most of the time; and when Thucydides makes both Cleon and the noble Pericles explain in their speeches that empire is inseparable from violence and tyranny, he is making manifest not the conscious beliefs of the Athenian people, but things that they may know at some level but prefer not to admit to themselves.
Andress’ metaphor of “cultural dementia” doesn’t apply to fifth-century Athenians; they are not misremembering their history in the modern manner, because the idea of ‘history’ in the sense of a critical account of the real past, and the associated idea that this is better than non-critical, fictional, mythical accounts, is only just being invented. But then, other than its undeniable dramatic force, I’m not terribly convinced by the metaphor as a way of understanding the present situation either.
Yes, contemporary conceptions of national pasts in Britain, France and the United States are incoherent, partial and self-serving (and celebration of Germany’s tradition of Vergangenheitsbewältigung shouldn’t obscure the fact that this applies – still, though cracks are showing – to public discourse, not the entire culture). But this seems to be less a matter of these cultures losing, through a natural process of mental decay, a firm grip on a once-clear and reality-based sense of identity, as the metaphor implies. It’s more a combination of, on the one hand, a persistent human tendency to found social identities in self-serving myths with a hefty shot of fantasy and repression (especially as regards one’s own crimes), and on the other hand the weaponisation of the past as an instrument of control or disruption.
The problem with history today is not that it’s a symptom of a general cultural malaise (though it probably is as well), nor that it’s failed in the mission that’s occasionally given to it of producing better citizens or people (though clearly it has). The problem is that most of what’s on offer is actively bad for us. It’s like processed food; full of the sugar, fat, flavourings and aromatic compounds that fire up the endorphins and get us addicted (drama! kings and queens! dramatic battles! Nazis! charismatic presenters in exotic locations! embossed covers!), stripped of anything that might actually do us some good, the nutrients and roughage of complexity, ambiguity and national shame. We think we’re getting proper history, and that this is good for us; what we’re actually consuming is industrialised pap, carefully engineered and expensively advertised; a mechanically recovered and reconstituted past.
As Nietzsche argued, we are as humans historical animals. We cannot do without history of some kind, as a source of meaning and identity, just as we cannot do without food. It’s tempting to consume greedily what’s on offer, because it’s there, because it slips down easily and satisfies our appetite, at least for a while – but it’s leaving us malnourished and deficient. We need to develop our tastes – and we need to teach more people how to cook…
*David Andress, Cultural Dementia: how the West has lost its history, and risks losing everything else (London: Head of Zeus, 2018)
Sphinx 
The Athenian speeches in Thucydides’ book always seemed too self-aware to me. I have no doubt that Thucydides was right about Athenian motives, but I think people lie to themselves a lot when psyching themselves up to do the wrong thing.
A different way of not taking them at face value, yes, that they are posturing and bluffing. It’s a question that does get asked of Cleon, as we’re primed not to trust him; how far is he lying and manipulating, how far is he also being made to give himself away as a manipulative liar? But Pericles tends to be given a free pass.
It’s the power of this form of representation, of course, that it permits such multi-layered ambiguity and pushes the reader to think about such things, whereas a modern historian is required to pick an interpretation and stick to it.