INTERESTS OF HISTORY

WHAT IS "HISTORY" AND HOW IS IT MADE?

Tracing any human institution from its inception to the present, or to its demise if that is the case, is simply a study of history and the impact the institution had on its times.

To fully comprehend any human institution, it is essential to find and evaluate the interests that brought it into being. What is meant here by the term, “interests,” is benefit, participation, welfare, good, influence, partiality, and a variety of situation-specific meanings such as wealth, power, position, and the like.

Probably the most wide-spread institution is that of “family.” The underlying interests are apparent. Sexual gratification, safety in numbers, economic need fulfillment and stability, procreation, two heads are better than one, companionship and psychological support, and other individualistic interests that are fulfilled by the family at all levels and by all its members.

Guarded financial and political institutions of power are the most difficult to enter and institutions that need members, volunteer workers, and money donors are the easiest to enter. The interests of the first are to guard and maximize their power. The interests of the second are to gain and expand power. All human institutions, in varying degrees and kinds, hold the same interests. And all of them want to leave their mark on history.

Dynasties, nations and kingdoms, ethnic groupings, families, political parties, religions, corporations, sport teams, universities, and other institutions of all kinds, when studied by themselves or in the context of their kind or in the context of their time of existence, open windows on history.

Competition between and among institutions leads to the windows on history being manipulated, generally by the stronger of the competitors or the winners of the competitions. Historians, being human and springing from their own histories, themselves manipulate the windows of history to achieve egocentric, ethnocentric, religious and other predetermined or desirable views of the particular era and area of study.

However researched and annotated, however impartial the historian, the resulting history is his story or her story.