Modern history shows grotesque disparities between causes and effects

Evidence

History is always stranger than we imagine or can imagine. It’s never black/white, it’s never either/or, it’s never “if a, therefore b.” The chains of causation snap when you breathe on them. Some iron assumptions are cobweb-thin. History is never tidy or shapely. It doesn’t have a dramatic arc. — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 1173 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

This juxtaposition of the cosmic-universal and the mundane-particular meant that however vast Christendom might be, and was sensed to be, it manifested itself variously to particular Swabian or Andalusian communities as replications of themselves. Figuring the Virgin Mary with ‘Semitic’ features or ‘first-century’ costumes in the restoring spirit of the modern museum was unimaginable because the mediaeval Christian mind had no conception of history as an endless chain of cause and effect or of radical separations between past and present. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 82 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Real history lacks tidy dramatic arcs and tidy causation. — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 1173; Chronological periodization distorts the meaning of historical processes.; The mediaeval mind lacked a conception of history as cause and effect — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 82 (+3 more)

Related

• The mediaeval mind lacked a conception of history as cause and effect (similarity 0.86)
• Scientific theories are superstructures explained by history, not causes of it. (similarity 0.84)
• Real history lacks tidy dramatic arcs and tidy causation. (similarity 0.84)
• Chronological periodization distorts the meaning of historical processes. (similarity 0.83)
• Simple causal accounts of the decline of grand narratives are inadequate (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Real history lacks tidy dramatic arcs and tidy causation. #corroborates (0.85) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 1173
• The mediaeval mind lacked a conception of history as cause and effect #contradicts (0.80) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 82
• Historical inevitability claims overreach; the past never dictates the future #corroborates (0.80)
• Chronological periodization distorts the meaning of historical processes. #corroborates (0.75)
• Nazi and Stalinist genocide expressed rather than betrayed modernity’s spirit #exemplifies (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 270