What year does “history” start for you, before which you feel like a pure spectator/documentary watcher/book reader? I think 1982 for me. Events after 1982 have a live salience and are open to rewrites in long-term personal memory for me
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Heh me too (1985 for TV). Non-history memories begin a couple of years before though, with newspapers. 1982 Asian games mascot, Apu the elephant, is first memory of public events.
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Probably the French Revolution. It roughly coincides with when architectural history starts to become more compelling to me.
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Hmm that sounds more like interest starting rather than a sense of “real”? Like do you feel a personal visceral sense of continuity of personal memory stretching back to then?
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i like this question, i think 2008 for me 😬
great recession w parents who are financial advisors had live salience
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I see different readings of the question in the responses. Sporadic episodes like the Atlanta Olympics 1996. wrt continuous personal attention, probably starts 9/11. On history 'in color': lol probably my lifetime only, USSR seems unreal to me and collapsed the year I was born.
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Heh the USSR was probably more real to me in the 80s than today’s China. It was an outsize live presence until it suddenly wasn’t. I’m genuinely sad about aspects of its demise.
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From a public infrastructure pov, it's the before / after New Deal.






