Journal 4-8-20

The definition of a historiographer is someone who studies the writing of history. My history teacher described it as someone who studies the history of history. At first, I kind of just laughed at this description of a historiographer and went on with my day. But after a while, I kept thinking about these keepers of history and their importance to the world. After a quick wikipedia search, I found that historiographers essentially research the methods and thinkings of former historians who kept records of the world at their point in time. By doing this, historiographers can analyze bias’s in historical writings and record keepings and make sure that todays society can get a completely filtered and unbiased viewpoint of the past. They also can view what societies are doing wrong and what they did right so todays society can prevent mistakes made by former societies. It seems like after maybe 100 years after an event, historiographers are able to have a viewpoint about the situation from afar.  By being distanced chronologically and having more information about the topic, they are able to form a more sophisticated and nuanced viewpoint. At a time like this, I feel like I am a historiographer of my own life in some ways. Before quarantine, my, and everyones, life seemed to be racing by. Everyone seemed to be worried about their grades, what they want to do with the rest of their lives, and what they are doing for turnabout. In the span of a day, everything changed. Life halted. During this time, I feel like, now that life is moving slower, I’m finally able to get that same distance that historiographers are able to have when viewing events from a different time. I’m able to have space from the high-speed society I live in to think and reflect on what is happening with my life. What am I doing wrong? What am I doing right? What do I need to change? I often wonder what future historiographers will think about our time. Maybe they can see that were missing something about this outbreak. Maybe they have the power to see that if we just made one small change, this quarantine could be all over and we can all go back to our normal lives. The answer could be right in front of our eyes, but because we do not hold the same sophistication of our future society, we are not able to see it. So we have no choice but to wait and see what the historiographers of the future will have to say about the world today.