“The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates
“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” – Stephen Covey
The previous two LOTRW posts have focused on oral history – which at its core might be thought of as a form of assisted life-examination. Oral historians midwife the process in several ways. They certainly probe the personal events making up individual lives. But they also look deeper. They help interviewees see and give voice to how their lives have been shaped and built by larger historical circumstances and trends. And at the back end – through transcription, interpretation, archival, analysis, and sharing – oral historians make the whole accessible to many others. They inform and inspire.
Having recently been interviewed myself, I’ve come away with several strong impressions.
1. Being interviewed certainly provides significant personal benefits. I’m profoundly thankful to have had the experience. I not only learned a lot about myself, but I also came to grasp more concretely which bits of my life mattered most to me, and why. More importantly, it sharpened my understanding of which aspects of my story might be useful or helpful to others – and which might be much less so. It’s even changed how I prioritize my day, and how I view current events. For these (admittedly self-interested) reasons alone I’d recommend the process to others. If you’re invited to give an oral history, you should accept. You might even consider thinking about what you might have to offer the oral historian and then take the initiative – reach out to one.
2. But throughout the process I was conscious that a lot of the Q&A covered events and memories going back half a century or more, and I was seeing them through the lens of an octogenarian – at the same time both rose-colored and less sharply-focused, possibly (oh, the horror!) even in error here or there. That brings up the second conclusion. Most oral histories tend to be one-offs, developed at a late stage in the lives and careers of those interviewed. Oral histories might even be more useful if they had a longitudinal dimension, stretching over decades, and capturing both the immediate effects of historical events and any longer-term impacts[1].
And more useful still if they captured the experiences of much larger numbers of subjects.
3. That ran up against a third point. The conversational tone of much oral history might mislead one to believe that oral history is somehow simple or easy – that it’s little more than a chat, and therefore almost anyone can do it. Much of the currently archived material – recordings of conversations between close colleagues, personal friends – might contribute to this impression. They certainly have a special value of their own. But Socrates and Stephen Covey provide stretch goals. Push the conversation. Take it to the realm of piercing examination. Achieve genuine understanding. Balance the larger trends of history with personal reminiscence. All this benefits from disciplined guidance. Oral histories are labor intensive, and to some degree bespoke. The oral historian may start out with a basic framework, but an important part of the process is follow-up to the initial questions and answers that branch off from some predetermined script and draw out fresh insights. And then there’s the curation part. Oral historians are few – and oral history sources are perishable.
4. All this led me to wonder – could diaries or journaling be useful adjuncts? I think the answer is yes, although when I was doing an internet search on journaling and storytelling I was surprised to find several sources speaking to the hazards of such activity – mostly along the lines of becoming to self-absorbed, and/or developing grandiose ideas of one’s importance and centrality. Think of it as violating the Stephen Covey idea – jumping past the seek to understand part and preemptively seeking to be understood. Perhaps oral history, by maintaining a focus on how the historical moment shapes our lives, could help us avoid this pitfall.
I chased a rabbit: could artificial intelligence be useful? I fed my iPhone ChatboxAI a bio and asked it to interview me orally, versus in text. “Amelia” turned out to be happy to do so. She was super helpful, polite, and supportive – scarily so. I’m guessing AI is probably already assisting oral historians with bits of their overall process (first-cuts at transcription, say), but to bring it to the point of conducting useful interviews calls for caution – and for framing by oral historians. it might be some time in coming.
6. A closing thought. Perhaps in addition to scaling up oral history directly, in one fell swoop, it might be a useful first step to increase public awareness of and appetite for oral history. One pathway might be K-12 public education. Today’s technology should make it practical for teachers to bring oral histories into every school subject from STEM to history, from economics to band and physical education… The right conversations would bring subject matter alive and energize the students.
Might even prompt them to examine their own lives a bit more intentionally; seek understanding a bit more broadly. We’d all benefit from that, and over time that benefit would grow.
[1]I’m told a few such studies exist. Britain’s The Up Study provides a rare (possibly unique?) example.