I studied enough history that I don't really want to study anymore... I mean really study. Once you really understand all the crap that was going on back in the day you're just grateful that you live in a better time.
Ofc, you can choose not to read a lot of personal accounts that people made there, you know, not learn by the stories but by the numbers. And that's a way. But I prefer to learn the stories.
The periods that are most interesting to me were the classical period and antiquity... so study the ancient greeks, study the romans especially... learn about the persians a bit to know that they were wankers but you know, civilized wankers... it also serves a good lesson in understanding that great civilizations like the ancient egyptians, if you don't keep up with the times, you'll get burried and that's what happened, the persians took them over. The persians are very fascinating people. Still wankers though but fascinating wankers. So it was fun for me to study all of them in depth. The Romans were quite an amazing people, I dare say, the greatest people who ever lived and they're the ones who really set up the west to be the center of progress and civilization. And ofc, we learn things every day. Just recently there was this discovery that Rome had been there for over 100 years before it's alleged founding by Romulus and Remus myth.
I studied the dark ages and medieval period more closely because I wanted to academically slap the idiots who didn't know crap about those periods and think it was the time when europe was overrun by savages and it was a gaping pit hole from all perspectives... which is quite untrue. It's a pretty fascinating period mostly in how things kinda take unexpected twists. The byzantines are also quite probably the most interesting civilization to exist. More so than the Romans because ofc, they were Romans but not just. The byzantines were more... fair romans let me put it this way. Ofc, some savages had to come and destroy them but that's life. Nothing good can last forever.
And ofc, I loved everything from the renaissance to the late XIXth century. I mean I studied a lot about that period and I love it. It's really nice. One area that I lacked when I studied that period and that has sort of diminished, I feel, my educational experience in the years I devoured entire books on the subject.... was that I neglected the in depth study of great people and great cultural movements and track them minutely as to how they shaped the era. I was more interested in how leaders acted, the way countries formed and reformed, how they changed... how wars were done, who won vs who, who got liberated, who got subjugated, the building and fall of empires and the rise of new nations... and a lot of stories behind great men of state. And the whole massive artistic movements that happened were like.... on the side, just touching on them... never exploring them in depth. Which lately, in the past year especially, I've come to regret. Because I watched these documentaries about the artistic movements and the artists. I mean last month there was this amazing documentary, 3 parts, about the life of Haydn... and about Rubens and many others. And cultural movements in depth... etc. and how better my pool of knowledge would have been if I had read books about the great men of culture and the artisitc developments of that time.
So not to know them, I knew what they were and like, the readers' digest version of them and who the main actors in each cultural movement was.. and the artists and what naught. But never in depth. And yeah... it's much more fun. I mean much more exciting and less mentally scarring than to read and understand the horrors of all the ****ing wars and the... well they're obvious now, mistakes that so many leaders and heads of countries did to devastating effects. So yeah. Art history is not stupid as I had thought 8 years ago when I was devouring book after book on history.
And ofc, the XXth century is the one that kinda... didn't wanna touch it all that much. I mean I studied it because again, everyone and their dog thinks they know stuff about WW1 and WW2 and I needed to learn to mock them and slap them back into their corner when they spoke idiocy... but it's too sensitive. It's too... innapropiate to talk about because there isn't enough distance from ww2 in particular to be able to talk on an academic level and LEARN from it rather than submitting to the FEELZ that people have on the issue.
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Ofc, this is about European and by extension, also western history. I studied a bit about chinesse history mainly because you'll see on the interents all these people who keep praising the "chinesse bureaucracy" system that they had in place as some amazing thing. And it was an amazing thing but it's not like... so amazing that you need to gasp and wet yourself over it.
And then ofc, I studied some history about India mainly because I studied about the UK... and because people kept saying that Britain did all this nasty stuff to India. Which you know... I kinda disagree with. Because I read the history of that subcontinent and let me tell you, I don't have a deeper hatred for anything in this world than I do for hinduism. It's like, awful. caste system ridden eternal enslavement crap. This alone will make you depressed.
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But yeah, history is fun.. .but it's depressing. To me, it was a rollercoaster experience. I read things that made me wanna stop reading and throw away the books. Because they're horrid. I read things that made me angry and I couldn't even sleep at night. And I read things that made me laugh and made me happy.
And then I decided to become really good at math and technical sciences because I wanted to become an engineer and the only times those give you emotions is when you're pulling your hair because you're an idiot and can't grasp the concepts.