--Einstein. I think he'll be more highly regarded as time goes on, as humans build the technology to plumb his insights.
--Hitler. History is full of genociders, but death as manufacturing was a real innovation.
--Neil Armstrong. The moon!
--Dickinson. No one quite does what she did, and she's pithy, writes about timeless interior concerns, and is simultaneously enigmatic and accessible, which I think will keep her read.
Everyone else, ashes to the wind!
Remembered, like, the name still shows up in history books? (Aethelred) Or remembered like a commonly known name? (Julius Caesar)
--Donald J. Trump.
Please kill me.
Caveat: I think there is a 0% chance that humanity survives another 1000 years.
Complaint: This timeline is too long! Nobody knows people from 875-1015. But possibly that is because it was the Dark Ages, I guess.
List:
- either L. Ron Hubbard or Joseph Smith, depending which religion wins
- One of the people critically important in the development of computers/the internet, selected pretty randomly by historians over the years until they are remembered as "the father of computers"
- Hitler
- Mao Zedong
- F Roosevelt, Nixon, Obama, and/or Trump, if the United States is still a thing
- one leader/fighter/protester for equal rights of some kind, selected at random by historians to represent iniquity in general (Nelson Mandela? Ghandi? MLK? Susan B. Anthony? Betty Friedan? bell hooks?)
- A few musicians/artists/actors/writers, but I think this is a total crapshoot and just depends on unpredictable collective consciousness stuff. Probably Beyonce though.
- Some random people who invented random stuff and got their names in the common vocabulary. (George Foreman, probably)
Is there anyone that lived in the 11th century whose name is widely recognizable to people today?
Honestly, if we get "George Foreman" seems like a good option. How can I help make it happen?
9: Yeah, I suppose.
10: Is that the same guy that had the purple crayon?
Actually it is kind of fun to think of who might be the representative of "rock star", and whether or not that will include current music or end at the 80s with some new era beginning then. Meaning the kind of musician who books arenas full of screaming fans and has fireworks and stuff.
Michael Jackson
Madonna
David Bowie
Freddie Mercury
Mick Jagger
Jon Lennon
Bruce Springsteen
Whitney Houston
Justin Bieber
Taylor Swift
Britney Spears
Prince
this is not a strong suit for me, but then again I mostly know the names of rock/pop stars that EVERYBODY knows.
12: Some famously obnoxious writer addressed this topic. I think he settled on Chuck Barry.
Oh, I found it!
7. Leif Erikson? But I had to look him up to know when he was. So I know the name but not the time period.
I mean, there's plenty of people from even before that, too.
I think it gets harder and harder to predict whose names last, as the population increases to incomprehensible numbers. I doubt the names everyone here knows aren't the same as the ones in Russia or China, and I don't think nations ever last 1,000 years, do they? Or if they do, it's improbable that the current setup will last that long.
My guess is Aimee Mann, because nobody else captures the depression of the age as well.
ELVIS. Obviously it will be Elvis.
Is there anyone that lived in the 11th century whose name is widely recognizable to people today?
There's a reason my list is so short. Some people clearly make the cut (not from the 11th century, but before): Aristotle, Plato, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great. Others are borderline, in the "known to people of some education" sense; from the 11th century, I think St. Anselm and Leif Erikson are like that.
It's not an exact parallel, though, because (theoretically) there will be much more comprehensive historical records of Modern Times than are extant of the Middle Ages. So more people will be in the running.
I think Hitler and either L Ron Hubbard or Joseph Smith are 100%. Everyone else, some degree of "who knows?"
Some times/places have lots of people that have remained famous for a long time -- ancient Athens with Socrates, Plato, Pericles, Sophocles, etc, and Renaissance Italy with all those butt-kicking turtles.
18.2: If Hitler is certain, doesn't it seem like FDR or Churchill are very likely?
If they remember Hubbard, they'll will at least be remembering somebody from near where I was raised. My reading teacher was a cousin.
I think Stalin will be remembered longer than Churchill or FDR, unless they conflate FDR and TR. Giant stone faces are lasting.
In a 1000 years the cover of whatever the Tim magazine equivalent is, will read "WHO WAS OGGED?"
23: or In Search of Historical Ogged.
"Only fragments remain of his writings, but he is known to have lived in a barbaric era of rampant, ruinous analogizing."
20: I don't think so. I feel like there are lots of historical figures where I vaguely know the good guy, or the bad guy, but not really who they were fighting with or what happened.
Alexander the Great
Genghis Khan
Napoleon
There's no hook for FDR and WC. Hitler did shocking, evil atrocities. FDR and WC fought back. My bet is what is remembered is "Hitler vs. the Allies" where no one knows anything about who the Allies were.
30: That's a good point, but the Duke of Wellington is pretty well-known, isn't he? Like Napoleon, he has a food named after him.
I started off thinking about who we know from (very roughly) 1000 years ago, and got William the Conqueror, Leif Ericson, and Charlemagne (getting a bit elastic on the time period with the latter). But the main reason any of those are globally significant today is because of stuff that happened roughly 500 years later - the European permanent settlement of the New World and colonization of much of the rest. So it's going to be tricky to project what's really going to be significant in 1000 years, because so much depends on how we get there.
The greater documentation of people's lives today in a literate society matters a lot, of course. In Helsinki last summer, I went to the Finnish National Museum, and found that there are several sculptors from around that time period whose names have been lost, but are known today by the school of work they founded (mostly in terms of church sculptures), which were produced in a specific locale in a relatively short time period. So one of the names I'll cite from the last 150 years is Rodin - big iconic sculptures that are likely to be memorable. In the political sphere, I've got:
A. Lincoln (pushing the boundaries of 150 years a little - but huge political effect, Mt Rushmore, and his face on lots of coins that will be likely be preserved in any archeological digs from the 20th century.
Hitler/FDR/Churchill/Stalin - Major collective effect on world history. Churchill, like J. Caesar before him, will be enhanced by his literary reputation.
Mao/Deng - The history of China from this period is likely to be significant going forward.
Gorbachev - peaceful transition of the end of the Soviet Union may be memorable.
In the art world, I've already mentioned Rodin. Not sure who else will make the cut.
If they are still giving out the prizes 1000 years from now, Alfred Nobel may still be a well known name. Otherwise, probably not.
Science: Turing and Von Neumann. Einstein. Darwin.
Not sure who else.
Nobody knows people from 875-1015
31: Churchill did get a lot of memorable lines in that war.
32 makes a good point: getting a popular dish named after you is a good strategy for achieving lasting posthumous fame.
It probably ranks below making a great scientific discovery and above committing genocide on the "reasons for being famous after you die" list.
In one of Eleanor Arnason's SF books, set like 3000 years in the future, Hitler is remembered, but no one remembers what he did. They just know he was from Earth, and famous. Everyone thinks he's cool. There's like, Hitler theme parks, and everyone has a Hitler teeshirt.
Also, Hitler is black, because everyone is black in the future.
This one, I think? https://www.amazon.com/Tomb-Fathers-Eleanor-Arnason-ebook/dp/B003UNLNGO/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
33 makes a good point. The reason we know e.g. William the Conqueror or Charlemagne but not e.g. the founders of the Song Dynasty is entirely due to the fact that we are a European and British-descendant country and those guys took over the rest of the world.
1,000 years from now if we still have humans with literacy and historical memory the surest bet for broadly-remembered figrue is almost certainly Asian -- Mao, Gandhi, etc. Maybe some scientists because scientific progress seems likely to slow down a lot over the next 1,000 years so Einstein or Linus Pauling may be more like Aristotle.
Neither the Duke of Wellington nor Beef Wellington are well known in the US.
In the art world, I've already mentioned Rodin. Not sure who else will make the cut
Picasso.
Martin Luther King Jr.
He will be known as King, Martin Luther, II. Historians will argue about whether the "95 theses guy" and the "I have a dream guy" are the same person, or father-son with only the son becoming king, or successive monarchs, or what, and how either or both got to be king.
39: I suppose you're right.
But is William the Conqueror any more famous?
Darwin, Einstein, Mao. Hitler, because if the second world war doesn't prove to be the last, no one will be remembered. Lincoln. Gandhi maybe. Mandela maybe. I'd like to think poets but the language will have changed too much. Music? Not many twentieth century figures.
We haven't had recordings of music for very long at all. Maybe performers will remain famous? A thousand years is a long time though.
I wonder if there will be one guy who they hold up as the villain who made sure that nothing happened to prevent global warming before it was too late. Trump could be that.
Osama bin Laden seems like the most obvious answer and also the right answer.
46: But we've already forgotten about him.
45 gets it right. And correspondingly Al Gore will be the Jesus figure of the postapocalypse.
Maybe in 1000 years wedding bands will still play "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang.
49: More likely there won't be wedding or bands in a way that we currently understand.
My list was exactly the same as ogged's list, except in place of Dickenson I had Zuckerberg.
I'd like to think poets but the language will have changed too much
So, Shakespeare will have been forgotten?
Some of Shakespeare's more memorable plots and key lines will probably be remembered. But more generally Mao and Gandhi, given ogged's ground rules. Specialists will remember a lot more names, and every now and then one will get a fame rerun for anticipating something the people of the 31st century find important. For example, George Lucas' uncanny prediction of the Gungans.
Osama bin Laden seems like the most obvious answer and also the right answer.
You think things are going to get really bad. I suppose it's possible that the re-ascendant Muslim empire of 3017 notes Sheikh Osama began the end Western hegemony, but whitey still has (almost) all the nukes.
So Andrew Lloyd Webber, probably. Cats will never die.
You think things are going to get really bad.
You know I do, yeah. Really, I'm assuming that he completely destroyed the post-war world order, and we'll need another major conflagration, probably worse than the last one, before things begin to get better again. Or, if I'm shooting for optimism, I think he'll be credited with ending the American century and possibly the United States, full stop.
Ending the American century doesn seems like it's necessarily a bad idea. Depends on what's next, I suppose.
Whoever's the guy after Xi Jinping is probably the one who gets to be called "The Conqueror".
If we survive we'll be communist, so Marx.
J.R.R. Tolkien, and E. Gary Gygax, for their incredibly accurate predictions of the events of 2674-2785.
Nah, Mandela will be forgotten in less than a century. Gandhi pretty soon after. Because they have no legacy. India is a military power and south Africa is a hopeless kleptocracy. You need lasting physical achievements. So Nixon (his name is on a plaque on the moon). Stalin for the White Sea Canal. Mao is just another crazy emperor who achieved fuck all. Hoover (the dam will last 2500 years by design). Churchill and fdr maybe if they're lucky.
I think from 1,000 years remove, WWII is likely to be remembered as Hitler vs. Stalin—it's a good first approximation in terms of land masses and casualties.
I'm very skeptical that any artistic or cultural products of the past century will survive (particularly post-digital but that's a hobbyhorse). I'm not sure that anything about American history will seem important by then, unless it's how we managed to ruin everything.
Hitler, Mao, Edison, The Beatles.
Archeologists will argue over the identities of the gods depicted on Mt. Rushmore and Stone Mountain.
Einstein and Gandhi are really good ones that I missed.
40: I figured Picasso was working in a much more ephemeral medium. Maybe digital reproductions of his work will survive, or maybe he'll be like Socrates, known to us from people discussing his work. But I figured that the people of 3017 will probably only know his work by reputation, if that, while some of Rodin's originals may well have survived.
Without reading: Hitler (definitely); Einstein, Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt (maybe); the author of the only surviving novel written in text message gibberish (by analogy with The Canterbury Tales). I've no idea how mass-media entertainers will persist since genuine mass media are so recent. My feeling though is that they'll vanish entirely from general consciousness.
Darwin, Joseph Smith, and "Father of $THING" are good ones. The point about the best-known probably being Asian is also good, but it's much too soon to call. Most likely to date I'd say is Deng, or a Mao/Deng opposition, as the Chinese typically remembered Qin Shi Huang/Han Gaozu.
64: Post-digital is going to be interesting. On the one hand, a lot of the culture we produce is likely to be lost - just look at how many web pages from a decade ago have already lost a lot of their context and are full of dead links. On the other hand, one of the best ways to make sure a text survives in some form is to make lots of copies of it in lots of different places. The ease of digital copying means that lots of stuff that people are inclined to make local copies of may survive in some form. As long as we don't get too dependent on getting our culture from a central server that has a single point of failure, the stuff that people are inclined to copy for themselves may survive as long as people continue to find it relevant.
Example from my family: A lot of the old family photos that in past years would have been passed down to a single descendant have been scanned, copied, and shared among multiple branches of the family. Those have become a lot more likely to survive in the hands of someone who finds them relevant than they would have under older technology.
Working against the copies is ubiquitous encryption at rest, which I don't see going away in any future I'd like to live in.
1000 years is much longer than I can imagine. I think ogged in 1 is on the right track, but have no confidence that those specific people will be remembered (I'd bet against Neil Armstrong, for example, and probably Hitler as well)
Inpired by the OP title, the opposite question could be interesting -- how long will it take for people who were household names to fade to the point that they're only memorable as part of a historical niche.
How long will it be before nobody really cares about Michael Jordan's career (or thinks of him like Wilt or Russell, as a dimly remembered great who played in an unrecognizable different era)?
What are the odds that a 25 year old American today would recognize the name "Wayne Gretzky"
How long will it take until nobody would think about using a David Bowie song to set a scene in a movie (except for an explicitly period piece)?
How long will it take for people to not care about the name "Oprah"? (that could take a while).
Hitler iff a better monster doesn't come along.
Another call for Martin Luther King because he's the only Twentiefh century figure with a national holiday to his name. In future millennia he will be as well known as Jesus Christ, or perhaps the Goddess Oestre.
There will be a whole month called Reagan by 2024.
David Eagleman wrote a short story in which you only stay in the afterlife as long as someone alive remembers you. So most people disappear within a generation or so, but the famous ones are stuck there forever.
Mao/Deng - The history of China from this period is likely to be significant going forward.
Agreed. I'm an optimist and I hope Deng will be better remembered. Mao's only everywhere because he's part of the story from which the Party gains its legitimacy. They'll jettison him the first chance they get. In a thousand years, he'll probably be as well known (and as well regarded) as An Lushan.
But then again, what ned said--more than anyone else, Xi is writing history, and China will probably be much more powerful when he's done than when he started.
80.1: Disagreed. They'll never ditch Mao because he's the founder; disavowing him would entail admission of error and so delegitimize the Party. I expect that whatever percentage of Mao is considered useful will be assimilated into a rebooted canon and persist as long as there's a unitary China, which may well be another 1,000 years.
I always confuse him with a large, flightless bird.
1000 years from now? Hitler. Einstein. Maybe Stalin? (but probably not: I doubt Uncle Joe's fame/infamy will prove that long-lasting).
All other names mentioned in this thread will be lost to the mists of time within the next two or three hundred years, I think.
Can I use this thread to complain about how I almost made it through a calendar year without having any medical emergencies, for the first time in (at least) 10 years, but unless I am magically improved by 7:30 tomorrow morning I am not going to make it? SO CLOSE! DECEMBER 26! CURSE YOU, WEATHER GODS! OR ALL THE OTHER GODS!
At least it is a weird, entertaining and relatively painless emergency. I have laryngitis, but it's super bizarro laryngitis. Since yesterday morning, my voice cuts in and out (and shifts volume occasionally).
Seems pretty random when I'm trying to talk- jumping between whisper, loud voice, silent, soft voice, whisper, silent, etc.
The part that creeps me out the most is that if I say aaaaah for a while, it settles into a steady rhythm. Sometimes voice/whisper, sometimes soft/loud, but with a steady beat.
(I'd been going with "wait it out" but I have a friend who is an ENT nurse, and she said it's weird enough to go in right away, and they do walk-in hours starting at 8 tomorrow)
Richard the Lion Hearted and Robin Hood have almost made it. The sheriff of Notts not quite as well. Ethelred the Unready is past.
We're ruled by our own Unrede right now.
Neil Armstrong has a very strong bet, as does Hillary & Tenzing, also Picasso, I suspect Monet, probably Pollock.
I think most heads of state etc will still be remembered in the sense that there'll be at the least a president-list that goes Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, etc. So will most senior politicians, again cause there's lists.
Pope Francis will probably feature as a Saint in the Catholic calendar.
Queen Elizabeth II.
What a completely un-New Zealander list.
Maybe I'm being optimistic, but I don't see the Picasso con lasting 1000 years.
Was Aristotle even as famous as Aristotle 1000 years after his lifetime?
68 Picasso worked in a variety of media much of which is capable of surviving 1,000 years (oil paintings, sculpture in stone, some of the metal sculpture under the right conditions, etc., though not the collages, doodles drawn on newsprint, etc.).
89.last Con? I had the opportunity to catch a major Picasso/Giacometti retrospective here last year. I have no doubt he was an artistic genius.
I think Von Wafer is correct about Osama for reasons he articulated in 57.
91.2: I have no doubt he was a marketing genius.
150 years.
If there is still science: Max Planck. He has fundamental stuff named after him. Einstein possibly for the same reason, which opens the possibility that Satyendra Nath Bose will be be remembered about as well as he is now.
Yes to Donald J Trump. We still remember Caligula and he was only emperor for four years and achieved nothing. FDR is about as memorable as Vespasian, so only specialists with know him. Unless somebody does an "I Claudius" on him. Mao more likely than Hitler or Stalin.
Very little in the arts. Nothing in the visual arts except possibly Rodin; no music: can anybody hum a popular song from 1017? Possibly some poetry and a few novels, but they'll be random survivors by sheer luck, so not predictable.
88. I'd like to think Armstrong, but it will be a very garbled story if any. Pope Francis is more likely to suffer damnatio memoriae than canonisation. Elizabeth II may be remembered in the ex-Commonwealth and ex-USA more than in the ex-UK.
85. Were you shouting to be heard in a big party? My voice sometimes does that if I have been.
Right now we are in the midst of the death of individuality. Social media is the mental circuitry of the Overmind we are destined to become. The Overmind will need no history.
That's ok, as long as the Overmind has good subject-verb agreement.
And Mossy wonders why the Overmind doesn't ask him to join.
It depends a lot on which countries have a continuous identity over this period of time. Most likely China. So Mao will be rehabilitated as a national re-founder stripped of ideology and erasing the bodies, much as Russia has done with Stalin. Maybe also Deng depending which economic vision of China is the most lasting.
Isn't a hypothetical future textbook going to devote as much space to movies and music as to politics? What about Hollywood figures?
93 - Richard Thompson did 1000 Years of Popular Music beginning with Summer Is Icumin In and concluding with Oops I Did It Again
100. Then Thompson cheated, which I'm sorry to learn as I'm a great admirer. Summer is Icomen In is 13th century at the earliest.
The last 150 years is also the age of the novel. Based on the number of copies heuristic the future will remember J.K. Rowling.
Based on dinosaur sexing, Chuck Tingle.
I think Hitler makes even if just in semi-mystical a role like Vlad the Impaler. (And Godwin was a joke, but it does seem that eponymous laws or principles often have staying power. Occam's Razor*, for instance. Maybe should be a separate category.)
90 leads to thinking about the tougher (or more random) question of who might become more famous than they are now? Someone in organizational/business areas like Deming, or Ford.
*For those prone to pedantic fuckwittery, yes he is not yet 1000** years ago but getting close.
**The term itself does not seem to have arisen for several hundred years after his death. So posthumous eponymous law/principle is one possible route to relative immortality (and exceedingly hard to predict).
I know I'm pedantic, but I like to think I'm not a fuckwit.
Hitler is the only one I'm confident in. He's a mythological figure already. We still remember Attila, though AFAIK he wasn't remotely as destructive.
The freedom to form one's own self-opinion is of course absolute.
(I was engaging in a general rather than specific bit of preemptive defensiveness.)
The future most definitely will not remember the correct usage of "media".
Maybe some throwaway observation in Mein Kampf will eventually be "the Hitler Principle", all he's remembered for.
No one wants to go with Eliezer Yudkowsky for successfully preventing the evil AIs from killing us all. How else are we going to make it 100 years...
It's probably not even going to be somebody real. It will be sparkly vampire who seduces high school girl.
81: That's the conventional wisdom, but over the long run--and we're talking about the very long run--lots of people can and have been informally purged from memory. The 70% good/30% bad formulation is already a pretty strong admission that they know he was a massive fucking mistake.
He's not a Supreme Ancestor, tied by blood to all who come after. He's not even a founding member of the Party--and people don't remember, say, Li Dazhao nearly as much. I wouldn't be surprised if the early years of the PRC fade into fuzzy memory--"yeah Mao was the first chairman and times were hard with some internal difficulties but things really got going under Deng, herald of the God-Emperor Xi who rules us to this day." I'd put it 50/50 that the big picture of him in Tiananmen Square gets replaced with someone else (Xi, or his successor, or taken down) in my lifetime.
FDR is about as memorable as Vespasian
Hrm. Not sure I agree. The cripple-king who ruled the most power empire during the biggest war the world had ever seen, whose reign was longest over the ancient Americamen, who summoned all the great sages to build the First World Destroyer, who was renowned for his wisdom in bringing light to the hill tribes? Nah, man, he's a legend. (Vespasian's pretty cool, though, too.)
I don't know how anyone could have any doubts about Hitler. He's up there with Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun.
Isn't a hypothetical future textbook going to devote as much space to movies and music as to politics? What about Hollywood figures?
Movies are a tough one. I'm pretty sure I can come up with a list of names that will be known by cinephiles and academics hundreds of years hence but a thousand and well-known by all? That's trickier. I dunno, Humphrey Bogart? Marlene Dietrich (because it's her birthday)? Marilyn Monroe? I can't think of any directors, maybe Hitchcock but I doubt it. The cinema is still so young, barely 120 years old.
For novels maybe Moby Dick and Ulysses?
115.2: Because I'm feeling pessimistic, I'll go ahead and place my bets that they'll still be making Star Wars sequels/prequels/spinoffs.
116 They'll all do major bank and the nerds will still be enraged.
Movies are a tough one. I'm pretty sure I can come up with a list of names that will be known by cinephiles and academics hundreds of years hence but a thousand and well-known by all? That's trickier. I dunno, Humphrey Bogart? Marlene Dietrich (because it's her birthday)? Marilyn Monroe? I can't think of any directors, maybe Hitchcock but I doubt it. The cinema is still so young, barely 120 years old.
Agreed with this. 200 years ago, instead of movies we would be talking about which opera singers would still be recognized centuries hence.
And composers. The top of the list would be Napoleon and Beethoven.
118. Or something...
Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Kitty Fisher found it;
Not a penny was there in it,
Only ribbon round it.
94- no, I just woke up on Monday like that. Anyway I was right; the doctor said it's probably a virus and I should wait it out. My record ruined for NOTHING! CURSES!
114: Agree re FDR (so much depends on continued good PR). Peacetime savior of his country becomes winner of greatest war in history, making sure that his allies bear the human and physical brunt of defeating arch-monster Hitler.
I think it was Harold Bloom who said that people would be reading Lewis Carroll when J.K. Rowling was long forgotten.
And in The Dispossessed, set some time in the future, Shevek makes his major physics discoveries re simultaneity building off the ancient works of "Ainsetain."
And Severian wandering into the hall of ancient pictures and one of them is the Moon landing. There are several episodes like that in the New Sun. Incredibly garbled versions of Theseus and Romulus and Remus. At least two small masterpieces, just as incidental chapters.
If anyone ever deserved the Akhenaten stricken from the rolls of history treatment it's Trump but I'm afraid that's not to be.
118: I think the availability of video and audio recordings changes things though.
With the 19th century opera singers, for instance, all we have now are written accounts by people who heard them perform. Would anyone except historians of the Jazz era remember, say, Louis Armstrong if all we had were written descriptions from people who had seen him play in clubs?
124. But we remember Akhenaten.
125.2 Buddy Bolden?
I don't know how anyone could have any doubts about Hitler. He's up there with Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun.
According to Trevor Noah, Hitler wasn't well known among black South Africans.
126.1 Only once he was rediscovered by 19th century Egyptologists.
I bet Akhenaton paid his contractors though.
127: Or see the 1998 Bollywood movie "Hitler", where the hero is nicknamed Hitler for his rigid adherence to discipline, but eventually learns to love and laugh.
I'd imagine that Hitler's image will undergo serious improvement in the next century or so once the last of the ww2 generation dies off. Even now I'm not sure that the consensus opinion would be "evil deranged mass murderer" rather than "strong leader who stood up for his country". Think how he's regarded in the Muslim world, in India, in Africa, in China... that is a big chunk of the human race.
127: My concern there is that cognitive bias (is the availability one?) makes him loom larger - and also dominant culture effect. For the former he can be supplanted, for the latter he may just not be relevant enough. A lot can change in 1000 years, and he's perhaps too obvious.
114: that FDR story is a deeply American one though, most of the rest of the world either doesn't hold on to it strongly, or doesn't agree with it in fundamental ways (ie America wasn't primary in the victory, cf Russia). At any rate, projecting these things forward is probably hubris.
Neat topic.
I would work backwards from stuff that's likely to be remembered-- the Panama Canal, the moon landing, fission, maybe genome sequence. Maxwell equations definitely. Maybe John Bardeen. Jimmy Wales?
Lots of these are actually projects that involve huge groups of people. Maybe the age of the individual, Lisa Simpson and Dwayne Camacho excepted, is basically over.
There's a fair amount of detail about Song China, Byzantium, and the Abbasids from about 1000 AD. It's just that, roughly speaking, almost no one, not even among their cultural heirs, cares very much. The amnesia isn't just anglo-american I think.
I just recently sent my dad a copy of David Macaulay's fantastic seventies-marinated and delightfully hostile sendup of archeology Motel of the Mysteries, strongly recommended along with his other books which explain in a lot of detail how people built long ago.
What about photography, where within 150 years, every single technical detail that allows us to look at images of the past, is basically a pointless archive now (that is, halide chemistry). It's not just youtube and Brexit that's making people disinterested.
133: But why will anyone remember the Soviets? They're easier to write out of the story.
114.1: I'm at the a-little-knowledge-is-a-dangerous-thing stage, but my growing feeling is that current PRC ideology operates in essentially the same way as imperial ideology did from the Han on.
From that I think that, so long as the Chinese regime is directly descended from the PRC, Mao will never be entirely disowned (though, to the OP, he may sink into obscurity). If there is a break in regime but China persists, I think he may well be remembered, but likely as a denigrated figure like Qin Shi Huang.
On the first point, I don't know if you read this thread, but the OP paper describes current censorship apparently trying to suppress even the existence of controversy in the Hundred Flowers/Anti-Rightist period. The related podcast compares this to the Qing, and says the current official line seems to be linking itself all the way back to Warring States Legalism.
I know less than you--I wouldn't even say I'm an amateur China watcher, just a dilettante. Thanks, I'll give those a detailed listen later.
I wrote a long screed originally, but to simplify: I think he'll just be allowed to fade away. China's history is instructive but it is not destiny; in the long run the Party has much stronger sources of legitimacy. Like moving the greatest number of people out of poverty in human history, and making China a real power again. That's going to matter so much more to national pride than a problematic figure like Mao. So I'm definitely on team sink-into-obscurity in the long run.
137: Agreed, obscurity is more likely than not.
While its obvious to us that achievements grant more legitimacy than succession, I'm not sure that's obvious to the CCP.
And I'm also a dilettante.
135: As soviets, sure. But Russia? But we are talking 1000 years. Why would we expect an Americentric reading to prevail?
Stalin would be remembered in Russia* FDR in America*, but who would be remembered worldwide? That's actually an unprecedented question. I still think Hitler is the best bet.
*If at all.
139: For the same reason that First Century history is Rome-centric?
Is anyone going to still live in Russia in a thousand years? Will they identify as Russian?
I guess they're less doomed than Japan (where everyone will die and then China will take the land), but still I don't think they'll be important.
There's a fair amount of detail about Song China, Byzantium, and the Abbasids from about 1000 AD. It's just that, roughly speaking, almost no one, not even among their cultural heirs, cares very much.
I'm a member of a fb group on Roman/Byzantine history which is full of Greeks and Serbs emphasising that the Eastern Empire was Roman, Roman, Roman to the end. They seem to care a great deal: call it Byzantine and they'll cut you.
I'll bet China will take Siberia before it even thinks about Japan.
Are the Greek and Serb churches Roman too?
Yes, China will end up with Siberia too. But *something* has to happen to Japan when the population approaches zero. Maybe it'll end up Korean?
I'm thinking maybe they'll stabilize at a lower level before they all literally die. And China and Korea currently have pretty dismal demographics too.
We all agree that America has peaked. So maybe instead of asking whether FDR meets the cut (I think he does, just because WWII is so unimaginably huge), we should ask what American things will be remembered. Washington, surely. Maybe Lincoln? The Korean War?
144: That's...huh. Obviously Roman in a sense, but very much more Greek in every way--that is to say, the Romans were much better at unifying the area politically then culturally supplanting a strong urban culture (not that would've wanted to, anyway, being Hellenophilc weeaboos). I guess some people do care more about deriving legitimacy from government descent than any of the more interesting facts on the ground.
I agree with 145. Japan's more useful as a foil, for now. And a trading partner. Siberia has resources and few people to ethnically cleanse send on a one-way train to Moscow recognize as minority peoples. Although that whole nuclear arms thing is probably relevant.
I've never trolled them with that, I might try it some time. However, it's true that most Greeks referred to themselves as Ρωμαίοι until the 19th century, and the Seljuks called their Anatolian state the Sultanate of Rum, so they're not just bullshitting. They're fond of pointing out that the first use of the term "Byzantine" was in 1557.
150: So they're just "well actually"ing everyone, then? Meh. No one would call the Sultanate of Rum Roman in any meaningful sense.
I think China will be willing to change policy (both birth and immigration) in a way that Japan will not.
No, and they wouldn't. They would simply point out that the Seljuks called the area by the name it was called when they moved in.
IIRC jihadi propaganda refers to westerners as Romans quite often.
Huh. I would've thought they'd have gone with some variation on "Franks"; calling us Romans ties us in to the people who were in large swaths of the Middle East pre-Islam, while Firanja or whatever reinforces the Crusader connection.
159: "Franks" is far more common. "Jews and Crusaders" I think was bin Laden's line.
That was also the name of his porn folder.
158: Maybe not often. I was thinking of this:
they [ISIL] refer constantly to a hadith describing a battle at Dabiq. Dabiq is a region north of Aleppo that ISIL currently occupy (at cost), that, according to analyst Will McCants who studies ISIL's apocalyptic narratives, they "purified" upon capture. According to the hadith, Judgement Day will only arrive when the armies of "AlRoum" come to fight at Dabiq.
"AlRoum" is interestingly vague; it translates as "Rome," yet ISIL seems to have reinterpreted the soldiers of Rome to mean the armies of the "crusaders," Americans and their allies.
150: I recall reading somewhere that the Ottomans never acknowledged the title of Holy Roman Emperor, and always pointedly referred to the Habsburgs as "Dukes of Austria" in official communications. They considered themselves the rightful heirs of the Roman Empire because they had the capital.
However, it's true that most Greeks referred to themselves as Ρωμαίοι until the 19th century
I was amazed to find out how the country "Greece" was created from scratch in the 1830s as a sort of project by the most romantic politicians of the rest of Europe. The city of Athens was barely even a town for 400 years of Ottoman rule, then was made the capital because everyone liked the idea of Athens being the capital. There was no ruling class so the Germans, British, French, Danish, etc. went through a long process of deciding who the King should be because Greece needed a suitable King. Then he was kicked out 30 years later and they installed a totally unrelated King. It sounds like the founding of Israel, if it was founded not by Jews but by fans of the Jews.
I guess you don't participate in a Fantasy Hebrew league.
165: Except there was a large ethnically Greek population in the area.
I mean they had little say in how their own country was established, unlike Israel.
Or how it is run now.
165: Fun fact: the newly established country of Haiti sent aid, including troops and coffee (to sell in exchange for arms, one presumes), to the Greeks during the Greek war of independence.
Except there was a large ethnically Greek population in the area.
Who called themselves Ρωμαίοι. The whole Hellenes thing was part of the invention ned is talking about. Western Europeans called them Greeks because Latin; they didn't even call themselves the Greek for Greeks.
Yeah, I've seen a story about some island--Lesbos, maybe--being liberated and the inhabitants saying "Hellenes? Who are they, we're Romans." (And actually, this might have been in 1919...) And I think that's amazing but obviously at that point they were as Roman as the HRE was (well, had recently been). It's a powerful brand.
170: I just finished Revolutions Podcast's series about the Haitian Revolution and man, what a story.
171-72 are indeed amazing but some of the amazement is due to our post-19th century conviction/brainwashing that nations are actually things. Before at least 1850 most continental European peasants when asked "who are you" would have said either "subject of the Emperor" or "resident of this town/area." That Greeks called themselves "Romans" wasn't particularly inconsistent with that -- it was the Ottoman term for "Greek" ie ex-Byzantine and significant for taxation purposes.
Not unrelated: people forget that the Holy Roman Empire was itself one of the longest-running political institutions in history -- unlike Hitler's empire, it really was a 1,000 year reich.
142: even that view of Rome is very American. You'd have a very different view, I suspect, if you had grown up in China. I think we can all agree that the USA will be strongly associated with this last century, but I suspect details about events such as WWII will look different to them.
Also worth remembering that history is aggressively interpreted (cf Rome in modern day USA) by people to support contemporary ideology and policies. So what this last 100years looks like in a 1000 years will have about as much to do with them as it does with us.
Nations are totally things, manufactured in the last 150 years.
Things, manufacturered in the last 150 years, drive some to ecstasy, seen as useless diversions by others.
175 Which probably will not last for a thousand years.
I don't think we enough to say if that's probable or not.
Nations are older and will almost certainly last. Nation-states are new and probably not going to be lasting.
A language nation is a dialect with an army and a navy school curriculum.
More reasons not to sympathize with Greeks pissing about the name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
179. Up to a point, Lord Copper. Find me the Burgundians on a current map of Europe, the Numidians in Africa, the Sakkai in Asia.
A good version of this game would be which nations (not states) still exist, and which newer nations claim the names of current ones.
Not all nations must last for "nations" to last.
183: I'll play, but you get to define "nation". In detail, with examples and edge cases.
183: That's a fun game, like how the territory of the modern state Ghana isn't strongly related to the old Empire of Ghana and I think doesn't even have any territorial overlap with it.
I'll bite: Canada will split up into one Francophone and three or four Anglophone nations; the north will be ruled by some other power. The only place that will continue the name "Canada" will be the Turks and Caicos Islands.
A good version of this game would be which nations (not states) still exist
That is a good game. Relatively few, especially if you exclude ones that survive largely because they have their own political sub-unit (e.g., Catalonia). There's also the problem of differentiating between "nation" "language" or "tribe" -- e.g., I'm pretty sure that a medieval university would have considered the Hmong, had they encountered them, to be a "natio" but I'm not sure whether they count for this purpose.
Oh, I see, you meant in a thousand years. I thought you meant what arguable nations currently exist that don't have nation-states.
In a thousand years, who the hell knows. There will be some form of Chinese nation, and I think that's about all you can say.
In 1000 years, the United States won't be a nation, but Texas will be. They will have a couple of genocides under their belt and live in what is now British Columbia.
The only place that will continue the name "Canada" will be the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Which will be under water.
