Personal Retroactive Counterfactuals as an historical exercise.

Illustration of Kristin Lavransdatter, a brilliant and highly non romantic exploration of a Medieval Norwegian woman that conveys, as fiction, the life of a common northern European in the Middle Ages much more vividly than a straight history could have done.  I suspect that the author Sigrid Undset put herself in her protagonists shoes many times in writing it. So much so, in fact, that her exploration of Kristin's world impacted her own life to an enormous extent.

We touched on this the other day in regard to World War Two, looking back on 1940, and 1941, from the prospective of 2020 and 2021, and 1980 and 1981.

Okay, what do we mean "retroactive counter factual"?

Well, something that's common enough and which I think all people do. That is imagining yourself in an earlier time.  Certainly, I think, writers do it.  You almost have to in order to write historical fiction, or even history, very well.  

Now, first of all I want to distinguish this from the self delusion of "I wish I lived" type fantasies, which is something else.  I've written a time or two on that as well.  People look at the era they currently live in, with all the strife and problems, and imagine if they'd only lived in some simpler time things would be prefect.  The problem with that is that its a species of self delusion and, oddly enough, most particularly about a person's own era.  I.e., this is the worst of times and there was a better time. . . 

That doesn't mean that there weren't better times, but any time is the times, and every time has problems.  Deluding yourself that "if only I lived 100 years ago" sets aside that 100 years ago was full of problems, as was 200 years ago, 300 years ago, and so on.

Anyhow, I do think that as an historical exercise people looking back has some merits to it and I wonder if history teachers ever assign this as an exercise?  I don't think so, but I wonder if would have merit.

As we noted, when we tend to do this as an exercise we tend to retain the framework of our lives otherwise, which makes it a more useful exercise. We wonder how often this is done.  I suspect that unless that's done, no real lessons are conveyed.

And by that, what we mean, is placing things somewhat in the context of our actual lives.  We noted that the other day in noting that if we were of military age, more or less, in 1940, we'd otherwise assume that we grew up on the same place, graduated from a high school in a year that has an equal place in the decade with others, etc.  In other words, as I looked back the other day I imagined that instead of graduating in 1981 from high school, I graduated in 1941, and from the same high school

From there, you can explore what options would have presented themselves to you. For example, I live in the same town now that I graduated from in 1981.  If I had graduated in 1941, the same high school was there.  My options in life would have been pretty much the same at the time, which is something a person ought to keep in mind in such a mental exercise and which helps accurately explore the topic.  In 1941 the economy here was in the middle of a war induced oil boom, for example, which would have been good to know if I was imagining what the life of a 17 or 18 year old here was like in 1941.  The same was sort of true, the oil boom part, in 1981.  There were some real differences in the economies here of 41 and 81 however.

In 41 there was no junior college, as they called them commonly then, as there is now.  Indeed, my father attended the local community college in what would have been one of its very early classes.  It was located in the high school at the time, which I would find dispiriting now, but which provided a real opportunity then.  But it didn't exist in 41.  I think it may have come in around 1946.

That would mean that educationally, as I noted, I'd have gone on to the University of Wyoming, probably, in 1941.

I note all of this as this presents roadblocks and diversions to how a person might engage in such a mental exercise, and that's the point.  Too often when people do something like this they imagine going back to a perfect world  The classic example is the Middle Ages and where you would have fit into them.

I can just as easily do that, as a mental exercise, but if I do there's more leaps. For one thing, in order to make that realistic, I'd have to go back to one of my ancestral cultures and locations.  I know them, so that's easy enough.  But more than that, I'd have to keep things realistic.

Usually when people do this they imagine themselves living in a castle and being a knight or something.  Indeed, I've seen exercises written for children which were "what was it like to live in a castle?".  Well, most people at that time wouldn't have know the answer to that question.

Most people would have known the answer to "what was it like to live in a hovel and subsist mostly a diet of grains augmented by whatever wild rabbits I could snare". That's quite a bit different.

But maybe a more useful lesson.

Retroactive Counter Factual. Imagining yourself seventy-nine years ago.

Romanticizing the Past