scott learns history
my journey of understanding the world & how it evolves.
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hi, i'm scott, and i still want to explore the world with the same curiosity that i had as a child back when i was asking my dad, "why is the sky blue?"
the extent to my history knowledge is from my Canadian public school education and the occasional YouTube or Wikipedia "rabbithole" I'll explore while procrastinating on getting real-life work done.
but this year, i want to make a more intentional effort to explore history in a fun way where i create as part of my process to learn.
ground rules:
- i should start every topic with a question i'm curious about finding an answer to, not just learning for the sake of it.
- i haven't "learned" anything unless i have something to show for it. at minimum, i should write something on this page for each topic.
- if i'm not having fun, i'm doing something wrong.
a few other things:
- i'm writing in all lowercase because history is often seen as a serious, real topic. but fuck that, i just wanna explore.
- history is a story
learning a topic like history is often seen as purely a knowledge-accumulating endeavour. in school i was taught about ancient china, alexander the great, and world war i as a list of names, dates, & facts to memorize. that doesn't interest me.
instead, i want to understand the principles of history → how they can be applied to the present.
i will undoubtedly run into issues around topics being portrayed differently by different sources. when this happens, i must caution myself from looking for the objective truth (which may be impossible to determine) and instead find something to take away from the differing perspectives.