When a historian writes a book we must ask should that book please the audience? If research brings something new but uncomfortable things about the well-known person, should that thing keep secret? Or should that thing tell to the whole world? Even if that thing is breaking the myth or legend the historian should uncover those things. But there are always people who are not accepting something.
Should the researcher tell only things that people want to hear? Or should they uncover also other things? Those things are sometimes hidden from a great audience because they are uncomfortable. And what would you think about the cases like some respected statesman changing the land area of the homeland to the half-liter whiskey bottle? Should people know about that kind of thing? That thing is an example and not basing the real case. In some cases, the people who were the close comrades of some great person are covering the myths very sharply.
And if something is against the public image of some person that thing causes anger. The criticism is a nice thing. But it doesn't mean that the researcher should lynch. Because the text that this person would not please somebody. If some text causes a violent reaction that means it has mean. Meanless texts don't bring cat-size letters on the front page of the newspapers.
What historians will write about us 50 years later? What kind of sources do they use? Today researchers are researching the people. Those who lived about 50 years ago use their diaries as the source. When we are thinking about things like Facebook and other social media. Things what those people wrote on social media meant to publish. In social media, people want to introduce themselves from the best point of view.
And that's why some people say that social media is not a trustworthy source about the things how people are handling things and how people think about something. But is diary or old fashion paper writing the objective port to the mind of people? The thing is that diaries are always the window to thoughts about people.
But still, there is one thing, that we must remember. The writings that are written in diaries are the things that people want to read later. So diaries are also offering a window to the mind of the person. But when a person writes things like diaries there is still the opinion of how the writer wants to handle things. When we are writing diaries there is always the possibility that the diary is not introducing all truth.
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Should researchers write only things that the audience wants to read? Or should they also write about things that might be uncomfortable for somebody?
The meanless looking things can be great things of the private life of the person whose biography is written. And should that kind of thing also bring in the front of the eyes of the readers?
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The person who writes the diaries might remember that some other person can read it. So there might be only things, what the writer of diary wants to handle. But how trustworthy diary is anyway? The thing is that there are many types of diaries. And some diaries meant for supporting the decisions.
The project diaries are meant to tell the project team what is done in the project. But when we are thinking about personal diaries, which are not meant for a public audience, we must remember that they might involve things that are not nice to read.
So should the historian remove things like the drinking problem from the research which object is the person who died a couple of tens of years ago? This is a good question. The fact is that the heirloom of the person might not want to handle that kind of thing in public.
But when we are thinking about the things like the statesmen or very public people. That kind of thing affects the decisions. When we are thinking of some people as idols or national heroes, we want to see them as the "pure boys". We don't want to hear things like alcoholism because it breaks the myth in front of our eyes.
That is one problematic thing in the research of history we always offend somebody's emotions. There is always somebody who doesn't like that personal life of some respected person hides tragedies. And that thing is problematic. If the historian writes only things that are supporting the myths that means the research is meanless.
The purpose of research is to bring new points of the way to those topics. If the researcher just repeats the mantras that are told before. Or refer to some other texts that thing would not bring new things in the topics. Those texts and tales can be very nice to read.
But they are not research. The writer can make some research for the book. But we must remember that they are not meant for study books. Maybe there are some historical characters. But they are novels or fiction. Those books are sold in the bookstore. Some of them are found in Christmas gifts. But their place is on the fiction shelf.
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