[Xmca-l] Re: Understanding/changing "something"

[Peter Smagorinsky]

Most of the "change" discourse is as follows:
History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be The second reason history is inescapable as a subject of serious study follows closely on the first. The past causes the present, and so the future. Any time we try to know why something happened—whether a shift in political party dominance in the American Congress, a major change in the teenage suicide rate, or a war in the Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look for factors that took shape earlier. Sometimes fairly recent history will suffice to explain a major development, but often we need to look further back to identify the causes of change. Only through studying history can we grasp how things change; only through history can we begin to comprehend the factors that cause change; and only through history can we understand what elements of an institution or a society persist despite change.

But the page is more about historians and their understanding of change, rather than leaders (Great and Small) intentionally trying to understand history by changing its course, which is a bit paradoxical, I think, given that it only becomes historical after the fact. 

On the other hand, people change history by rewriting it. Sometimes that's good (as when the past is re-interrogated to find that what's written is insufficient or wrong) and sometimes bad (what's known as "revisionist history" in which it's rewritten to suit a new truth regime).

But maybe I'm not connecting dots, but instead adding unconnectable dots?

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces+smago=uga.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+smago=uga.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2015 2:26 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Understanding/changing "something"

Could you connect a dot or two to my question, Peter?
I could not find it on the page that the link opened to.
mike

On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 11:16 AM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:

>
> https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-ar
> chives/archives/why-study-history-%281998%29
> is the best I could find.
>
> Obama campaigned in 2008 on a "hope and change" theme, which is 
> different from "change and understand." To which Hilary Clinton 
> replied "I have 35 years of experience, fighting for real change"
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces+smago=uga.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:
> xmca-l-bounces+smago=uga.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of mike cole
> Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2015 2:09 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Understanding/changing "something"
>
> For a current writing project I have been led to think about the fact 
> that Kurt Lewin is widely quoted as telling his students and 
> colleagues that "if you want to understand something, try to change it."
>
> I have long associated this idea with the notion that if you want to 
> understand HISTORY, try to change IT. But either I am reading Lewin 
> into Marxism, or hallucinating. Can it really be true that no Great 
> Leader has ever said that you want to understand history (a particular
> "something") try to change it?
>
> There are well known major influences of Lewin on both Vygotsky and 
> Luria that might be illuminated by this inquiry, one way or the other.
>
> Thanks for any help you can provide.
>
> mike
>
> --
>
> All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes 
> you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see something 
> that isn't even visible. N. McLean, *A River Runs Through it*
>
>


-- 

All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see something that isn't even visible. N. McLean, *A River Runs Through it*