History – your own, your faith’s, your Country’s, the world’s, science, really just about everything (even the most menial) – is important, right? Why? I think it’s because it gives us a sense of self, of place and of connection with what led up to you in the present. History provides a foundation for who we are and how we live and even how we ought to live.
If we can agree that history is important in our development, why are we so lax when it comes to what actually is considered history?
Well, perhaps it’s because we’ve gotten away from the historical facts themselves and have somehow substituted what we think the facts probably were/are or otherwise have embellished them because of the ‘context’ of the times or the events surrounding the actual facts. I BLAME THE ENLIGHTENMENT for this ‘contextual history’. {Right now, you’re thinking, “What gives this old hound a platform to question such a monumental change in the course of Western thought?”}
Don’t get me wrong, I fully recognize and agree that the Enlightenment was perhaps a divine gift to humankind. In so many aspects of life, the Enlightenment was a defining and positive change in human development. For all the wonderful things brought to us by the Enlightenment’s opening of our thinking and approach to governance and political thought, art, music, literature, medicine, religion, etc. etc,. etc., it also brought the notion that is was legitimate to question long held ‘common’ wisdom and patterns of thought. That is in itself is a good thing. However, in respect of history, many modern thinkers have recast the facts to suit their more current interpretations of our past.
Rather than belabor the Enlightenment, I’d like to growl at how perhaps a contextual overworking of historical events, norms and beliefs can actually erode the basic truths that gave rise to the belief, event, etc. I know that there can be a good faith examination of the past but I am looking at another motivation.
Of particular concern to me is the 24 hour news cycle’s ( particularly cable news) ability to manufacture its own particular version of truth by using a “news alert” or the embellishment of a report by a host on cable TV in the early AM show. Then they repeat it throughout the day as if it was THE FACT(s). And, cement it in viewers’ minds by bringing in other commentators from their stable of flacks to discuss and validate the statement/report by the very fact that it is a serious topic to examine until, lo and behold, at the late evening broadcast, this report is locked in the viewers’ collective mind as “truth”.
Sure, sometime it is accurate. All too often, our experience in the last 20+ years shows it is later found to be made up or twisted to fit the bias or preferred narrative of the particular news reporter or media organization. Clearly, there are professional reporters and ‘honest’ news organizations that would prefer to cease to exist than to engage in this behavior – but wouldn’t you agree they seem few and far between these days?
So, a dishonest politician makes an outrageous claim about another and it is reported as factual by news organizations so often and evaluated so thoroughly as if it is factual by panels of “captive experts” that, before you know it, the report becomes the norm. Does that mean it is ‘history”? To be looked at in the future for an understanding of how our society functioned at the time the event/other supposedly occurred?
Add to this the fact (I believe, indisputable) that our schools have all but given up teaching students how to analyze such things. Tell me that you believe that exercises in critical thinking and/or an emphasis on the importance of getting to the “bottom” of some matter(other than science) is on the curriculum of our high schools and colleges ( already too late for my money), and I’ll sell you my old kennel ! Which BTW is under a bridge!
So, now we have generations of cell phone babies lapping up the kibble put in front of them by unprofessional and inadequate, if not unscrupulous, (but intentionally designed as very compelling) media and you have a grossly uninformed and betrayed populace which expects very little else because they don’t know what ‘else’ could exist.
Without getting too politically oriented, I think the several ‘grossest” examples of this over the last 2 decades are: Al Sharpton – in just about everything since 1987; Hillary Clinton and Alan Schiff’s Russia Gate and the Biden Administration’s lies about Joe’s fitness to serve as President or Kamala’s as a serious candidate for President. The USA has been treated to the ‘poop’ these people have left on our lawns for far too long. Of the three, I am most unhappy about Hillary because I had believed she was smarter than she has demonstrated and could actually have done some lasting good things for us. But, disappointment in our political class seems too often the result of an uniformed populace. {A classic case of chasing one’s tail around and around.} For the other two, I harbored no illusions about their ability to get it right. It’s not one sided, I well recall that GW Bush saw ‘weapons of mass destruction’ hidden throughout Iraq and sent thousands of young men and women to find them. Thereby, thoroughly complicating a Mid-East already a mess.
There are some positive signs that Americans are waking up to the ‘pandemic’ of a national loss of basic honesty, the poor service rendered by our Press and Media and the failure of our schools to really educate our children to critically observe and to reason. Other Western nations suffer the same malaise. But, getting our act together requires that we recognize and publish the truth of our situation and take affirmative steps to correct our contrary behaviors. Paraphrasing a trainer I once had: “We also need to call out and reward integrity and punish falsity.” I’m gnawing on how I can personally help this process.
Otherwise, what is said in the future about our times might have little relation to the actual factual history.
breasail 