Yu Minhong originally ran New Oriental, not to say that he was a billionaire, he didn't dare to think about it, at that time, he just said that he had no money to go to the United States, he was poor to death, and he had to look at his wife's face when he went home, and his nest was dead, so he set up a school, got a mom-and-pop shop, and "made steel by local method", and wanted to get some money to get out of the tuition fees in the United States as soon as possible, and immediately slapped his ass and leftBut now, when Yu Minhong came out as a successful entrepreneur, he said to young people again: have a firm goal, strategize, move forward bravely, and vow not to give up until the goal is achieved!After reading this short **, I will smile. Because it has a connection with the history books that I have been reading recently, there is a kind of view of history - "Whig view of history"!
1.What is the Whig view of history?Now there is a mainstream political party in Britain called the Liberal Party, and the predecessor of the Liberal Party is called the "Whig Party". The Whigs emerged from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and dominated British politics for a long time. The Whig Party's philosophy of freedom, the restriction of royal power, and progress are the dominant ideologies of today. The reason why modern Britain is modern Britain is that the Whigs can be said to have contributed enormously.
In the 19th century, British historians summed up the history since the Glorious Revolution and described it almost as a Whig party history. In the writings of these people, the Whigs were the progressive force in Britain, and it was a historical necessity that Britain continued to move towards progress under the leadership of the Whigs, while those forces that opposed the Whigs at the beginning were backward forces, and their defeat was inevitable.
In 1931, the British historian Herbert Butterfield published a book called The Whig View of History, which strongly questioned this view of history. To put it simply, Butterfield sees the Whig view of history as victorious, modern, our, obsession.
The term "Whig view of history" was invented by Butterfield. Historians had been unaware of the use of it before, but as soon as Butterfield said this, historians immediately realized the problem. 2.Why is the Whig view of history a problem?
First of all, the Whig view of history makes you feel that today's is a historical necessity. For example, Luo Yonghao, who was mentioned at the beginning of the article, ridiculed Yu Minhong's "original intention" of opening New Oriental!In stark contrast, I saw a report about how Chery Automobile got started. The party later sighed that it was a small factory in Anhui at that time, how do you know what is going on with Hyundai, and it is so difficult to build a car. We are pure ignorance and fearlessness, and we started to build cars, but we persevered step by step, and now we have become a large and important company. I think that what Chery is talking about is closer to the truth of history, how can there be so many firm goals, strategizing and moving forward bravely. Second, Whig history is to evaluate people and events in history with today's values. Here, I'll give you a simple example, Yue Fei. There was a time when someone in China said "Yue Fei is not a national hero", why?Because, the first Yue Fei fought against the Jin State, and the Jin State is now part of the big family of the Chinese nation, and that fight can only be regarded as a civil war, so it must be "downgraded";Second, Yue Fei once suppressed the peasant uprising, and the peasant uprising was good, so it was necessary to "degrade" again.
This is the history of the Whigs, the history of which all history is written as contemporary history, the history of the victors who are "dressed up" by today's people. Butterfield resent this style of writing, and he advocated that historians should learn to see history through the eyes of historical people. If you want to understand Yue Fei, you have to imagine yourself as the real Yue Fei back then. - Return to the scene of history". Obviously, the "Whig view of history" is now an undisputed pejorative term, representing a primitive and backward historical narrative that is not modern enough. 3.How to get out of the "Whig view of history"?
You might say that any narrative is subjective, there is no objective perspective in the world, so why can't we adopt the perspective of Whig history?Whig history is also a perspective, and a victor's perspective, which allows you to quickly find the meaning of historical events, which is a benefit. But if you only have this one perspective, your view of history is very naïve. Especially if you want to learn from history, and want to use the experience of history to do things yourself, or the future, then you must jump out of the "Whig view of history".
A more practical view of history is to abandon the idea that everything is predestined, treat historical events as one of many possibilities, and the future as a probability distribution, and then use statistical methods as much as possible to calculate the probability of future events through historical data. Rather than seeking to guide the future with all kinds of assumptions of common sense, it is better to use history as a database from which statistical laws can be discovered. History has given us not an inevitability, but a possibility: people in the past can't see what they are today, just as people today can't see what the future looks likeSome people in the past were able to realize their imagination, just as it is possible for us to realize our imagination today......