History and Wisdom
They say that there were invaders. So, they were. They were brutal. They desecrated, they vandalized. They killed able men, raped or made women sex slaves, defiled even children — mutilated and maimed. Horrible? Yes. History is full of horrible things. But today — the present –is a logical continuation of the past. Or so I thought.
“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”― Winston S. Churchill
It took some time for me to understand that history was always the victor’s story — but today we know these stories are not cast in stone. If the tables were reversed, the same would have happened and this is not hypothetical. Selective interpretation of history and picking and choosing of certain events for which today there are acts of ‘retribution’ or ‘revenge’ under the name of reclamation of rights.
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” ― George Orwell
The majoritarians of today lean on past injustices to narrate a story of historical wrongs and then go after the others without learning that a victim always feels the same — vulnerable, afraid, restricted, choked, and deprived of dignity, rights, and necessities. This story is so universal that I don’t need to quote instances. The reader can relate to many local stories that are told as part of their history. The only question is what they can relate to — the victims of yesterday or today.
History bears no truth because the narrative begets the facts and not the other way around. Since history is closely linked with politics, it is necessary to make history a tool that can be molded to the narrator’s convenience. We have seen that the two narratives have quite opposite tales to tell. Textbooks can be changed and students can be untaught or retaught.
More often than not, the state controls these narratives. The ones in power rewrite and republish history. Schools become the first formal engagement point. Today’s curriculum has been changed and I don’t know if the heroic stories that we read yesterday are the same as what we would tell our children.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Most politicians are unread but they have the most reach and power — so they are the most heard. Furtherance of their agenda needs a starting point, and the starting point is always the wrongs of the past. The correction of past wrongs, when packed and told — either in the form of history in schools or election speeches, appeals to the emotions of the individuals. Since democracy is after all a game of numbers, appealing to the majority makes enormous sense.
If there was ever a learned input, it is now threatened under the guise of recorded artifacts that make their way to social media and even the courts. Today we see instances of students thrashing teachers and exposing them to the vagaries of violence and legal retribution. Most news is fake, but they are mostly consumed because of the easiness of reach and the impressionability of young minds. Logical debates and open conversations have disappeared into the instantaneous consumption of short-form content.
Between numbers and narrative, there is another aspect of history that we might have to consider — history could be a science. History is the organized form of theoretical postulates, validated by ‘available’ records. But the truth is that many portions of history won’t have records, because many historical facts related to verbal narratives may devolve into hearsay.
“History is a set of lies agreed upon.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte
History is cogent storytelling with potential evidence from the past. The records could be numismatic, literary, archeological, journalistic, or fabled. But we note that only some histories are chronicled — for example, the Chinese and the Sri Lankans. The challenge is that all of these are subject to human bias. Therefore, history is an art and a science at the same time.
History is also about us — the real us. What is happening today and labeled as current affairs is tomorrow’s history. We debate today if climate change exists. Even if there is an evidentiary approach, there is an underlying interest of the corporations which carry the tag ‘Big’. Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Tech, Big Religion, Big Charity, — the list goes on. Big Corporations fund, invest, lobby, and influence politics to further their causes. But the key part is that history is insensitive to these undercurrents, but play out as emotional fodder in elections and lawmaking.
The only defense that we all have is to eliminate binary thinking. We have the power to enable open-minded thinking and exchanges, allowing contrarian views to bubble to the top. It enables us to discern and disagree, and that history is never a story that can be agreed upon. The most powerful tool is literature, which captures these narratives, events, and perspectives for future generations to read.
But certain things are undeniable — the role of humans in the history of the earth and how they see their future collectively are in their hands. This is certainly possible to make the individual more important than the ‘greater good’. Greater good has always been a well-intended path to hell. The concept of ‘benevolent dictatorship’ is eulogized, because the individual does not want to carry the burden of his responsibility. When the sheep emote, the wolf rules.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
― George Orwell, 1984
If we see that somebody is about to change the past, it is the first step toward their aim at power. Everybody else, who subscribes to such a change, is the shoulder that such an authoritarian will rise. Leadership is not about writing the wrongs of the past, but accepting the complexities of the past that cannot be undone — but the present generation holds the key to a bright future, where the individual mind can seek and conceive.
The human mind is the most powerful entity that has been created. If evolution has to happen anymore, it is the evolution of the human mind in all spheres. If democracy was the greatest revolution that humans have evolved into, then it is important not to circumvent the true spirit of democracy by cutting short the opportunities for young minds to explore, debate, and discover the truths of our pasts.
“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”
― Winston S. Churchill
In this way, there are no true teachers. As Hermann Hesse writes in his book Siddhartha, knowledge can be subjective, because it comes from other sources; but wisdom is always self-experienced. If the victims of yesterday want to make it right for this world today, it is to treat each person with the same dignity they yearned for and the opportunity that they always sought.
~Ashok Subramanian © 2023
