Then Now Later History Repeating How the Future Historians Will See Us

hi hi hi

[Applause]

so here’s the scoop every single one of

you

is making history because i study and i

share history as my job

what i learn every single day is that

the most important and interesting parts

of history are not actually

what happens in government seats or on

thrones

so things that are going on with

everyday people throughout history

that means you guys so in your

neighborhoods

in your grocery stores in your homes

even in your actions interactions online

that’s where history lives and every

single person’s story

is a valid and important part of the

historical record

now you have probably heard the phrase

history repeats itself

that’s because there’s merit to it even

though it’s cliche

and here’s the thing are we really

learning anything from the history

that’s happened before

it’s a little bit easy to lose track of

the fact that some of the things we

think are mundane everyday

happenings are very similar to things

that happened in the past

and if we look at them and compare them

we might get some pretty interesting

learning out of it

because one day future historians are

going to be looking at us

and wondering what we were doing and

this can be really daunting it’s hard to

accept that long after you are dead

there are going to be people judging

your actions but that is the

responsibility of being someone

that is a part of living history i’m

going to give you

a few examples of how we are repeating

history today

and how looking at the past might make

today a little bit better

okay margarine uh this is a very common

thing it’s on

every supermarket shelf it’s easy to

find it’s actually a french invention it

was invented in the 1860s

when napoleon iii wanted an alternative

to butter it was a little more shelf

stable and a lot cheaper

the french did not really embrace

margarine but it made its way across the

atlantic to the united states in the

1870s

at which point the dairy industry got a

little panicked because they were afraid

that consumers were of course going to

gravitate to something that was cheaper

and they were also worried that because

it was a cheaper item than butter

that margarine was going to be sold

fraudulently packaged as butter

that actually happened uh and so the

dairy industry formed this coalition

against the adulteration of butter and

as part of those actions that they

created under that coalition

they lobbied and they also got pretty

litigious

about how margarine could function

because they were looking after their

business interests so

there were laws that eventually became

enacted margarine was taxed

and how it was labeled was very

carefully regulated

and how it could even cross state lines

because some states had different rules

about it

and in some cases the color of it was

mandated including pink

so if you ever want to have a fun google

afternoon look up pink margarine

this all sounds funny right like i’ve

chuckled over it many many times but to

the people living through it it was

actually pretty serious

these three guys in particular did hard

time

uh the guy on the right was charged with

crimes against bunner butter

found guilty and spent time in

leavenworth the other two guys got

charged for margarine smuggling

the guy on the bottom left actually did

two terms in prison so this is very real

stuff they probably didn’t think of it

as historically significant but it is

and today we have reached a point where

plant-based proteins

are finally challenging the beef

industry in a way that they never have

before

and the beef industry is having a lot of

those same concerns that the dairy

industry once had over margarine

they’re worried that consumers might

accidentally

buy something that’s labeled as a burger

that is not beef thinking it is and that

perhaps even they might like it more and

their livelihood is being challenged

now there are in more than 20 different

states bills being introduced

that will significantly change the way

that plant-based proteins could be

labeled

they basically don’t want them to use

any meaty words on the packaging so

obviously that means the word meat but

also things like

burger and hot dog and sausage and

patty and even jerky none of that

now in 150 years how is this all going

to look to historians who are trying to

figure out what we’re doing today

they may actually find it a little bit

sad because a lot of the resources that

are being fought over

are dwindling so they may look at us

almost like the

musicians that played on the deck of the

titanic like why were you fighting over

plant-based versus animal-based

we can’t even get animal protein anymore

we’ll see how that plays out

the next thing i want to talk about is

actually a bit of a gear change it’s

white flight

so in the 1930s and 1940s and for

several decades after that

as the black population in u.s

industrial cities increased

white people left and they went to the

suburbs this is sometimes called

a triumph of racist social engineering

that’s a phrase i borrowed

from the amazing author ta-nehisi coates

and at the same time these redlining

processes started this is something that

the us government did

they took maps of cities and what they

did was they graded them

color coded them and showed you which

neighborhoods were desirable and which

were not

and the ones that are outlined in red

predominantly black neighborhoods

and what that meant was that black

citizens could not get mortgages they

couldn’t get loans to buy their own

houses

which cut off their means to gain

property and increase personal wealth

that also meant that those neighborhoods

lost out on a lot of infrastructure

nobody wanted to fund their schools they

didn’t have a lot of businesses that

wanted to move in because everybody

thought it was hazardous

because a government map labeled it that

way and this is something that shaped

cities and that we are still trying to

deal with today

the ramifications of this are not fixed

at all

but i’m going to switch gears again

because now we are at a point where

california is kind of under a microscope

california is our most populous state

because of that everyone wants to study

how its population shifts and changes

and it’s reported on

all the time it’s very clickable one of

the things that gets reported is that

conservatives are trying to leave

california because they think if they

move somewhere else

they might have more like-minded

neighbors that is definitely happening

but the thing is

california is a vast place and there are

a lot of factors going into what is now

being labeled

as a significant slowdown in the sit in

the countries or in the

states population growth so there are

big financial issues going on here

housing i’m sure you have heard in

california is so expensive that middle

income families

cannot afford to buy anything there they

certainly can’t afford to live there

long term in many cases

if someone is single or if they are a

couple and they decide that they want to

start a family

for a lot of them it makes more sense to

take the money they have and move to

another state where the cost of living

is lower

and what that means is not only are

those people leaving the state and

decreasing the population

but the children they have are also not

going to be born in california

all of this is a really complicated

series of motions

at the same time that these things are

happening they’re also some of the

wealthiest people of all time

moving into california but when

historians try to tease apart the

reality of what was going on here

the trick is going to be figuring out

which of these stories they might

uncover on the way and if they only get

certain

angles on it they’re gonna have a really

hard time figuring out

how much of this shift in population was

partisan based how much of it was

financially based

how much those two things were

overlapping in interacting

now because this is the kind of thing

that i do in my job i am super duper

grateful that i am not going to be one

of the historians that tries to figure

this particular situation out

because it is a lot i’m going to shift

gears to our third

example this is my man louis catorce

um i love louis xiv of france

uh for a lot of reasons he’s one of

history’s most fascinating figures in my

opinion

and he was also very conceited he

thought himself pretty much a god

and as a consequence he developed this

vision of how france was going to live

up to what it meant to be ruled by him

and part of that meant that he wanted

france to become the epicenter

of style of culture and to be seen as

really powerful and wealthy

and one of the ways that he did this is

sort of fake it till you make it plan

was that he took a lot of the national

treasury and he put it into

building versailles which started out as

a muddy gross hunting village

now it is one of the most opulent

palaces in the world and he even hired

an up-and-coming gardener who was famous

at the time a master gardener named

andre lenotre

to design the vistas so that they would

take people’s breath away when they

entered into the garden areas and the

reason for all of this was because he

wanted visiting dignitaries to

see this amazing thing he had built and

to be like wow france is really really

powerful and stable like i want to be an

ally with them because they got money

and stuff

and that absolutely worked because

they were allying with him and at the

same time as he was

promoting all of this idea of opulence

he was also launching military campaigns

to expand france’s borders

and he was using statecraft to make

deals with people and expand france’s

power

worked like a charm france became the

dominant power in europe during this

time

and even now today when you think of

france you think of culture

and art and beauty and that was all part

of his design

but the problem arose that he didn’t

live forever it turned out he was not a

god

uh when his great-grandson louis the

15th took the throne

he maintained that level of opulence

like he had grown up that that was part

of how you

reign but he didn’t have the same

clarity of vision that his

great-grandfather had had and he was not

as good and decisive when it came to

making decisions

and as a consequence he ceded a lot of

the territory that louis xiv had gained

and he lost a lot of francis power and

while he was a very popular king during

his reign

by the time he died france’s coffers

were empty

now that meant that louis the 16th louis

august who was the grandson of louis the

15th follow along uh he inherited a big

fat mess

and bless his heart he was not ready to

rule anything

he really did not have the skills to run

a country and so all he knew to do

was to continue the opulence and the

artifice it is why his wife marie

antoinette became known as madame

deficit

she was spending money they did not have

we all know that this story ends in a

pretty

disastrous way for the french monarchy

now i’m pretty confident most of us are

not running countries

if you are go you um but i’m also pretty

confident that most of us have some sort

of social media

presence and i’m not going to dog on

social media i love it

but we all sort of inadvertently have

borrowed a page from louis xiv book

where we often kind of

put our best foot forward in an effort

to conceal maybe

what we’re trying to get together on the

back end we don’t all have it together

yet but that’s fine

and i’m going to throw myself into the

bus here so uh on the left side

of this image is a beautiful plate of

freshly baked bread

i made that bread i’m real proud of it

made excellent sandwiches i got to tell

you and so i was so pleased

with myself that i took pictures of it

and i shared it on social media i put it

on instagram i put it on twitter

people lauded my bread baking skills i

will give you that recipe later if you

wanted it’s amazing

but on the right is what that counter

actually looks like it’s a mess

when i’m not hiding it artfully behind a

cookbook page

and with careful cropping there’s a lot

of clutter

and by the way i don’t have kids this is

just how i live

um i have droids charging on my counter

and toys from the haunted mansion

i don’t know why you wouldn’t but you

know whatever and the important thing is

i’m gonna clean that counter eventually

so it’s not really any big crime i’m

telling a little fib and showing it in

its best light when i’m showing you my

bread we all do this kind of thing

there’s nothing to feel guilty about

here however

what i think we have lost track of is

the fact that we are all accepting a

certain degree of artifice when we

interact with each other online

and that’s fine but sometimes we lose

track of it to the point

that the bar moves a little bit further

and things get a little faker along the

way and soon people start representing

lives

that they’re not actually living we all

kind of turn into louis xvi

and that’s not really a problem for most

people they don’t take it to extremes

but some people do

and the thing is that we have reached a

point where you don’t have to look very

far to discover that a lot of people who

claim to be influencers

are up to their eyeballs in debt and

sometimes going bankrupt trying to

represent a lifestyle that is just not

realistic and is not anything they can

maintain

now in 150 years what is all this gonna

look like

will historians who probably will have

the digital record as their primary

source

be able to tell when we were fibbing

just a little bit versus a whole lot

will they be able to figure out how our

ideas of what reality was shifted and

what was acceptable in representing

ourselves shifted

and moreover will they wonder why we pay

more attention to people on youtube than

we do to city council members

this is all stuff worth thinking about

here’s the thing

i am not here to tell anybody what to do

we are all living our best lives i hope

but the thing is i think if you think

about your own participation

in historical events like these big and

small

you start to realize that the choices

that you’re making every single day

are like sending little letters off to

the historians of the future

when you become aware that those choices

and those messages

are telling them what life is like today

you actually gain a great sense of

agency you realize that you’re writing

history

and that’s important but what i really

love is that it’s likely to lead you to

make better choices when you realize

that the places you live

and how you live your life and how you

tell people about how you live your life

and what you buy at the grocery store

all of that is really important

you start to gain this real sense of

pride

and i think if we all recognize our

place in the historical record in this

way

we all kind of rise up just a little bit

to be a little bit better about it

we can actually build a much better

present and consequently

we’re going to leave those historians

with a much better future

so it’s not only going to make their

jobs easier because we’re being a little

bit more truthful

but i have a feeling that they’re going

to thank us

for making the effort to look back learn

a little bit and hopefully do better

thank you so much for making history

with me here today