Hooray for the Kooks and Weirdos!
Like Winston Churchill said, history is written by the winners. That's why I like the stories that get missed and forgotten, the ones that slip between the cracks and disappear until some intrepid researcher scoops them out.
Sure, history is about wars and nations, emperors and armies, but it's also about the spirit of a time and a place, the daily surface-level reality of normal people.
Normal people, of course, are often every bit as strange as "Great" people — and often quite a bit stranger. Unlike the wealthy and powerful, who can privately indulge their weirdness and wickedness, the ordinary folks must either publicly embrace their inner deviance or find brave and creative ways to hide it.
I think the real story lies in the words and deeds of the so-called "common" men and women . . . who were often anything but. If you want to learn the truth about the zeitgeist, about the cultural milieu, look at the crackpots and eccentrics, the iconoclasts and free-thinkers, the ones who had to find a way to function within a society that did not accept them. Those are the people who were forced to make some really interesting choices. The ideal Edwardian man, living in the Edwardian era, is hardly fascinating. The individual who would have been more at home in another century and/or on another continent and yet has to cope with the Edwardian era, on the other hand — now therein hangs a tale!
Sure, history is about wars and nations, emperors and armies, but it's also about the spirit of a time and a place, the daily surface-level reality of normal people.
Normal people, of course, are often every bit as strange as "Great" people — and often quite a bit stranger. Unlike the wealthy and powerful, who can privately indulge their weirdness and wickedness, the ordinary folks must either publicly embrace their inner deviance or find brave and creative ways to hide it.
I think the real story lies in the words and deeds of the so-called "common" men and women . . . who were often anything but. If you want to learn the truth about the zeitgeist, about the cultural milieu, look at the crackpots and eccentrics, the iconoclasts and free-thinkers, the ones who had to find a way to function within a society that did not accept them. Those are the people who were forced to make some really interesting choices. The ideal Edwardian man, living in the Edwardian era, is hardly fascinating. The individual who would have been more at home in another century and/or on another continent and yet has to cope with the Edwardian era, on the other hand — now therein hangs a tale!
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Danni
(new)
Feb 08, 2014 02:08PM
The most fascinating part of history is not what people have done to change the world, its that fact that they are just people. Their true thoughts and identities will probably forever be hidden from us because the only memory of them that that was preserved were their greatest or most terrible deeds. Remember the stories of strangers, carry them with you and share them often...that's where the hidden treasure is.
reply
|
flag
Upside-down, Inside-out, and Backwards
My blog about books, writing, and the creative process.
- Austin Scott Collins's profile
- 28 followers
