There's always more history (2020)
hillelwayne.com
hillelwayne.com
Find a willing friend or coworker, and ask them why they did something with a project of theirs. When they answer that, ask them "why" about their answer. Do this a total of five times.
After the second "why," they'll probably have to think pretty hard. The fourth or fifth "why" sometimes elicits a "because it's just done that way" or "I dunno" response.
Then let them do the same to you.
It's a fun exercise.
Yep -- having a child is what taught me that "because" is a totally legitimate answer. Or, for an older child, "I don't know, you should research that".
This is quite a profound point, and worth reading the article for
But the profound point was the generalisation:
> We can always look further, peeling back more and more layers of the history.
> But two layers is enough for this essay. With two layers, we can see a common pattern in studying history, the difference between answers and explanation. When asked why something is the way it is, most people will give a post-hoc rationalization. They’ll see the present and come up with reasons why it’s “better” for things to be that way. If you look a little into the past, you often see that “things are this way because they were this way”. And if you look deeper, you see the forces that lead to things becoming that way.
> ... But it’s all worth the effort. Digging into the second layer teaches us much more about the context and reasons for why things are the way they are. And I can’t deny the puzzle aspect of it all, the joy in solving a mystery. Lost knowledge found again.
But, nah, probably just trying to rile up people in general, sort of a TV sitcom ersatz.
Also uses the word "excavating", maybe he read a bit of Foucault.