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