[toyg]

WW2 is THE defining moment of the XX century. In 200 years time, we will have forgotten everything about Watergate, red/black terrorism, punk, vinyl, the Space Race, ICE engines, the labor movement, sexual revolution, Beatles and Rolling Stones - but kids in school will still have to learn about the Nazis and the Soviets and Pearl Harbor, in the same way today we have to know about the French Revolution - because it fundamentally altered the cultural and political setup of the world in ways that have been felt ever since.

[eropple]

One of the things kicking around the back of my brain is that we won't have forgotten this stuff 200 years from now, because it happened within living memory of people who were around during the rise of effectively infinite digital storage and searching. We remember a lot more than you suggest from the 17th-19th centuries, and the recorder is functionally "clicked on" from about 1900 forward; that's only ramped up.

You see this a lot with music services, and with the way that availability has shaped musical tastes in younger folks. It isn't uncommon to have people who are much older than me really into modern pop, and it isn't uncommon to have people who are much younger than me listening enthusiastically to stuff made twenty years before they were born. Obviously both sets of people existed before Spotify etc. - but now anybody can be those people without effort, and it has created an effect where older stuff is never really ejected from the mental map of "music listeners". You can, if you listen and have a breadth of understanding, know when a piece of music was written in the last ~30 years or so, but there's a leveling effect where it's all just part of the library now.

Barring significant events(tm), we aren't going to forget much of anything going forward. It's just going to be a question of who was driven, either intentionally or by accident, to trawl the right archives.

[GhettoComputers]

I disagree, we have a choice to learn or remember, but the effect of communism, the Republican Party not being the party of trump, China not being communist for decades, life before internet or bottled water is long forgotten.

Anyone can play music, not everyone can read tomes of history.

[maweaver]

I find that hard to believe. 200 years ago was the early 1800s. We have hardly "forgotten everything" about Beethoven, Dickens, the abolitionist movement, the war of 1812, etc. I can almost guarantee in another 200 years, the civil rights movement, the vietnam war, the cold war, and the beatles will all be taught to some degree or another.

[toyg]

I'm sure you can walk down the street and ask people "do you remember the war of 1812" and most will answer "wut?".

Obviously historians will care, but society as a whole won't. We barely remember the 1960s.

[InitialLastName]

In the US, they sing a song about the war of 1812 before every major event. People might not remember the details, but it's fully baked into our culture.

[JKCalhoun]

Do you remember your President Nixon?

Do you remember the bills you had to pay?

Or even yesterday?

(Sorry, this young American couldn't help it.)

[GhettoComputers]

Everyone still talks about slavery’s effects.

[93po]

I think that's because race issues are still very much (and sadly) a thing in 2021, and understanding race issues in historical context is very important. Also slavery still exists to this day.

[GhettoComputers]

Race issues are an issue everywhere. No study of American slavery would help any race issues today, nor has it ever.

[93po]

I guess we'll have to strongly disagree on this

[ben_w]

Anecdotally, I was taught much more about the Industrial Revolution than the French Revolution; and plenty of the musical names from 200-300 years ago — Bethoven, Schubert, Bach, Mozart — were ones I listened to on Classic FM in my school years[0].

Certainly most culture will be forgotten (the Wikipedia list of 18th and 19th C. classical composers are 676 and 1620 long respectively)… but I can say much the same of their timeline of the 18th century[1], including a famine that killed 10%-20% of Ireland[2], and the 7 years war[3].

[0] I blame the “Mozart effect” getting in the news at the time, but still.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_18th_century

[2] I’m embarrassed but not surprised this wasn’t part of my British education

[3] If anything, I’m confused this wasn’t part of my British education

[toyg]

The 7 years war was just that, a war over territories - as such, it's fundamentally forgotten. The French Revolution, on the other hand, was a cultural upheaval that affected society everywhere, so it's still mentioned. Obviously the British have an interest in downplaying it, like the Irish famine, but still it cannot be ignored.

[michaelsbradley]

Was the French Revolution as close to “pure evil” as any thing/event could be? And a cause, for all time, for red faced shame on the part of French speaking persons the world over?

[toyg]

No, but it was as controversial an event as it could ever be - it polarized pretty much every aspect of society across the entire continent. There is a Before and After that event that affected pretty much every European country, and most of the following century (arguably all the way to WW2) was fought over whether that event and its principles were Good or Bad. Even countries that were left somewhat unscathed, like Britain, still defined themselves (for a very long time) in antithesis to what the event generated (Napoleon).

[api]

No. It wasn’t great but look up Pol Pot.

[michaelsbradley]

Further reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs_of_Compi%C3%A8gne

https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2020/01/notes-for-2020-lou...