Since the day man mastered the skill of speech, he has asked himself the question “Why?”. Why is the sky blue, why am I here, why do I do the things I do? Questions that can only be answered by more questions. Therefore, when man found itself on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he turned to the cave walls and pieces of charcoal to try and make sense of this world. He drew the world as he saw it and somewhere along the way, he found the words to accompany his drawings. These words were then passed on and over the years, their original message changed.
Still, man could not solely rely on his drawings to explain the world around him, so he started inventing stories for the things he could not explain – not yet, anyway. It is a tale as old as time, for every unexplainable phenomena there is a magnificent story to fill in the blanks. Ancient Greeks saw Zeus as the cause of lightning, the Chinese believed dragons to be the deities that governed the earth and Native Americans worshipped the earth as if it was a living and breathing organism. Cultures and respective names may vary, but the concept stays the same. We turn to myths and legends to explain what we cannot. Every culture has their way of dealing with the X-factor in the equation. It would take thousands of years before science would catch up with folklore and offer valid and irrefutable explanations for why the sky is blue or how this world came to be.
Even now, in modern times, we turn to our imagination and sense of creativity to make sense of the things that have happened. Every nation has its name to protect and its values to uphold. It should come as no surprise that some people would rather see history rewritten in a different tone. Of course, it is impossible to change the outcome of the past, but if the aftermath of World War II has taught us anything, it is that it is always possible to simply forget, ignore or deny what has happened. But instead of conditioning an entire nation that something didn’t happen, you can always try to tell the story differently. Take the Civil War in America for instance. Roughly two hundred years ago it was North versus South. Slavery versus abolishment. Each side had its own agenda and its own way of telling what happened. Or a little further back, say the Battle of the Golden Spurs in Belgium, which for some is an excellent tale of glorifying the Flemish resistance and demonising the French occupiers. But no matter the nationality, type of government or mentality, there will always be those who benefit from a somewhat altered history.
Changing history is in itself not purely malicious, but the reasons why could be. To rewrite history is to always rewrite something for your own personal gain and that could be a problem. It seems unlikely that the Chinese will smile each time they hear the words Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution, much like the Americans will hate bringing up the subject of Vietnam. But sometimes, in those rare moments of lucidity and selflessness the rewriting of history can be something unifying and necessary. If the Flemish people had never heard those wonderful and inspirational tales of how mere peasants conquered the soldiers of the French King, would they have been able to declare their independence five centuries later? Would the brave American soldiers have dared to enter Iraq if they knew how horrible the war in Vietnam really was?
Luckily, since the rise of the Internet it has become somewhat more difficult to alter the course of history due to millions of people who are constantly monitoring the world and uploading their opinions about it. Their collective subjectivity acts as a sort of failsafe should anyone ever try to change what happened. The Internet is not bound by morals, opinions or censorship. In some way the Internet is more steadfast than most history books because it offers so many different points of view. In the end, we can read all we want, but we will still make up our own mind, we will still deduct the information for ourselves and interpret it as we see fit. Therefore, it is feasible that we forge our opinions, not based on just one source, but on many sources.
But what is mostly forgotten is the fact that every word we write, whether we are certified historians or mere fervent bloggers, is subject to our personal opinions. What we write can never truly be objective. In all that we write, do or say there hides a sense of self. Therefore it is quite difficult to defend the position of an objective history. It would be quite hypocritical to proclaim that we can write sans prejudice. But that shouldn’t be a reason to wipe the slate clean and start a new story.
One of the main objectives of history is to tell what happened as precisely as possible. It is a most tiresome and gruelling process of fact-checking and data-processing. But at least the result is one of collaboration and intersubjectivity and these two ingredients often lead to something reliable.
Since it is impossible to integrate every detail that lingers in the corridors of history, it is better to have a condensed, yet substantial book written, not with the intention to be precise and accurate, but with the outlook of staying true to past events and documenting them in a way that preserves its relativity and truthfulness.
No comments:
Post a Comment