Halx

This post is inspired by a song by Project Pitchfork called Existence

Here is an exerpt of the lyrics of the song:

did someone realize
that our life is based
on the history we've been taught
we are living the results of a lie
fundamental facts
have been changed and changed
again by the ......
and we keep their lie alive

It brings up an issue that I've been contemplating for years. We're taught our world history all through our childhood. These are simply things that we are made to believe as facts, but we have no way of knowing if any of it is true or not. We should all know that to the victor goes the spoils and also creative license in the history books. Some of the things that make you proud to be who you are today may not have been as they are in the books, or they may not have been at all.

Some say that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but what are we supposed to learn from history that has been fabricate?

There are a few of us here who do not care to wave the flag of our ancestors. This would make it easier for us to rest on this theory that history may not be like you think it is. As a small example, we can look at the USA's founding fathers and how they owned slaves and had mistresses - these things are not taught in school to small children. That's easy, though, because it wasn't too far back in history.

If that was easy enough to accept, consider that even bigger things in history, like the story of your country's independance, your religion, someone else's religion, the rise and fall of past nations, the causes of wars and such... have all undergone a bit of airbrushing to make them more appealing and acceptable. There some things that historians cannot touch, but we still take what they say for granted.

The moral of this is: have pride in yourself and only yourself, for it is the only entity that you truly know.

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thefictionweliv

My half sister is homeschooled and I overheard one of her lessons being read, something along the lines of George Washington's dramatic ride through the battlefield as he went through three different horses as he kept getting shot off. The history books have been spiced to oblivion to make them seem like these great heroes in a further attempt to ensure pride in a nation that was founded on the slaughter of an entire way of life.

Less needs to be taught about what has happened and more about what is happening, because history has been taught for ages and for ages we haven't stopped repeating it so what good has it really done? How much is real and how much is false it doesn't really matter. The young need to be instilled with a inquisitive passion for the future instead of watching every step of the past. With an endless way a mistake can be made knowing the one thing we could of changed doesn't do a damn thing.

tiberry

What you're describing elludes to people becoming a product of their environment in that what they're taught somehow influences who they are in as much as how they view the world.

You further conclude that this must be flawed, because what we're taught might not necessarily be the truth.

Am I right so far?

If so - I couldn't agree with you more. We are a product of how we choose to experience everything that happens external to us. Our viewpoints and values that ultimately make us who we are should come from within, not from those of popular opinion or society in general.

Nothing means anything except the value you ascribe to it. In the end, that is all that matters.

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ShaniFaye

Im sorry I could never think that way.....IMO its an extremely self centered way to live, and I have no tolerance for complete selfcenteredness....according to the way you put that I should have no pride in my child and thats completely unfathomable to me

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zen_tom

Halx, anyone who builds their world on shaky foundations is bound to have it knocked down.

The process of having deep-rooted beliefs knocked down is normally called a nervous breakdown.

The mind's normal response when it has it's foundations chipped away at is to recoil in fear and anger. This response can lead to denial, the development of elaborate explanations and the formation of delusional beliefs.

So yes, you are absolutely right. I wonder how many people really do hang their hearts on such fragile pegs as these?

I don't see it as self-centred at all, I think ShaniFaye has misunderstood what you mean.

Sure have pride in your children, that's something that you have created, and you know that everything you do is true and untainted by lies, adjustments or exaggerations. All Halx is saying is that you should be carefull how much pride you put in things that you cannot truely know about.

I'd add that pride in one's country is slightly absurd since your birth within some particular set of borders was an entirely random thing anyway. Is anyone proud when the roulette wheel comes up red? Is anyone proud when you roll a 6?

ARTelevision

I agree as regards the nature of our knowledge of the outside world. However, I add to that the knowledge of ourselves. We are as deluded about ourselves as we are about the outside world.

Coming up with a way to live with this situation is challenging. It requires thorough skepticism - especially about one's perceptions and thoughts.

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ShaniFaye

well if I took it wrong Im sorry...but "having pride in yourself and only yourself" seemed like a pretty cut an dry statement to me

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roachboy

in my role in "real life" as a historian, i take the above for granted.
and would echo additionally what art said
but the conclusion i draw from it has to to with the pervasiveness of the political
and the need to understand the arguments that frame relations to the world as arguments
elaborated to address relations of power (political, cultural, economic) in the present
and backwritten in the form of "history"

the fact that these frames are arguments does not for that mean that anything goes
because there are questions of validity and criteria for thinking in those terms
but they are not absolute.
therefore you find yourself having to generate a space for thinking as a kind of ongoing project
which makes it both a bit harder to be in the world
and more rewarding to be in the world
even though most of the time arguments you would rather see vaporized as a function of their wholly problematic status
keep spinning away

sometimes i still dream about revolution
even though i no longer know what that would mean

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ARTelevision

roachboy, agreed - but for your particular take on the political realm. I see it differently. Actually politics is the realm where anything does, in fact, go...

As I've indicated elsewhere, politics is not about truth - it is about power.

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roachboy

maybe this is a semantic difference---the definition of the political that i use comes from the work of claude lefort, whose stuff is really interesting--rather than try to defend it here, i'd refer you to that--because i do not see any way in which you would loose by checking it out. i'd be happy to point you at things in particular.

the upshot is that the political is a way of thinking in the ways i outlined above--it is not the same as "politics"--you can have a regime that would work to undermine debate by reducing it to arbitrary positions based on fractured information as part of its ideological project--and that strategy could nonetheless be understood and debated--but not within the same register--so there is a kind of meta-register that enables us, for example, to have this conversation--the political is a way of designating that meta-register.

the only downside of it is confusion. in french its a little easier because the registers are distinguished by switching the gender of the word.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

zen_tom

Yes, ShaniFaye, it is a pretty cut and dry statement, and in isolation, it is pretty harsh, and not something that I'd agree with myself. I just don't think that's what Halx meant by it. Halx, have you got a better summing up statement we can all agree on?

stonegrody

The history that is taught in schools is propaganda to breed more sheep. Brainwash material to make us proud of our "origins" and be patriotic to our country without questioning. If the truth were told of how things really happened and how our "forefather's" really were, the general population would not be as easily controlled by the powers that be. It's just another tool in the American people factory. If only we could be allowed to learn the truth and form our own opinions.

There is no harm in questioning. Seek the truth, seek knowledge and form your own opinion. Just because it's what you were taught or what you've always known does not mean it is right. Accepting everything you've been told is memorizing. Questioning and forming opinions is learning.

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Halx

I didn't write this to appeal to peoples' emotions. What I said is what I meant. Feel free to disagree with me all you like, but the second you think that you truly know everything around you is the second you've bought into the illusion. You know your children? Sure, up until they develop enough cognitive skills to lie or hide their emotions. Then from there, it's hit or miss.

Regarding Art's statement about being disillusioned about ourselves; very true, but at least it is a reality that nobody can blame you for believing.

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Sargeman

I think it is wrong to say that about what is being taught about history. The history classes I went to were not George Washington history or Sam Houston history or on a grander scale Napolean history. I was taught American history, Texas history, and World history. It was not important what they did in their personal lives... ie did they have any mistresses or how many drinks of wine or how many cigars they smoked, that adds nothing to how the US or Texas or the world came to be.

Now how can you teach for the future if you don't know what went on in the past? How can one teach about racial equality if I'm not taught there was racial enequality? How can I know that dictator "A" is not going to try to invade and take over the world if I'm not taught that Napolean or Hitler have attempted it already?

There is good and bad to be learned from the past but that's how we learn for the future.

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ARTelevision

roachboy , if you be willing to post that reference and the associated points you make regarding the possibility of political discourse as a thread in Politics, it may be worth discussing there - as it's a digression here, I think.

Edit: ...or even in a separate thread here. I think the Philosophy of Politics is very fitting, as politics is indeed a branch of classical philosophy.

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Suave

Although what you say is true to an extent, Halx, I don't think it's as far-reaching as it comes off in your post. There may be certain things, when relations were much more provincial, where this kind of issue would arise, but it would be much more difficult to fabricate this kind of thing in the past couple hunrded years. After all, most things of any large importance have many witnesses, whether they be other countries, delegates, soldiers, etc. and you can't just lie about something in that happened in front of a large number of witnesses and expect people to believe you. History may be biased in favour of the victors, but I doubt that it's biased enough so as not to be trusted at all. The application of some skepticism and logic can make any historical viewpoints accessible.

Halx

Suave, if you've ever taken a social psychology class, you'd know that even the word of many cannot be taken as truth. In many cases today, institutions are running their mouths, shaping peoples opinions with information they do not even have. I know it sounds pretty far-reaching, but you just have to look as far as the thread in politics that outlines the dual realities that Bush supporters and Kerry supporters are living in.

Besides, it's not the word of the people that writes the history books, it's the word of the victorious administration. If you also want to get an idea about how much influence the government has on what is written in books, take a look at the new elementry school text books; you'll find an odd Orwellian feel about them, as if the color of the language we speak has been drained from the text to conform with politically correct standards. That's the government's work.

Now, Sargeman, I'm not saying history shouldn't be taught. I'm not even saying it should be taught differently. I'm saying that now, as adults, we shouldn't hang on to any personal impact that we've let history have on us. History shouldn't be anything other than "stuff that happened a long time ago." Whatever religious, nationalistic or family pride that you maintain out of the 'history' of your people has been fabricated to appeal to you and is thus invalid.

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Cadwiz

There was talk here a few years ago about what should be taught in school regarding the KKK. I remember thinking, "what other things are they revising, or have they revised?". It was a real eye opener for me.
I do like talk to people from other countries to see what their "world history" has to say about the things I have been taught.

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dontmisspel

Let us say we go back to the first time history was recorded, that history was probably biased and etc. However, it was based partly on the "truth" and each time history was passed on or written down it was based on the previous and previous. My point is that the history we have is a direct link to the truth, therefore one should study it and learn what can from it and ultimately learn kernels of truth there are in it.
Unless of course you don't believe in the concept of a past ( which I get the feeling you don't, as in, it doesn't matter what the past was the present is our reference point, thus, anything that is held up as the past could just as easily be a fabrication of the present) then if you think that way your point is moot, because in such a world one shouldn't believe in anything because everything could be a fabrication including reality, the same reality which leads you to become yourself, it makes no sense not to believe in your creator(reality) but believe in yourself(the product of reality), in that case you shouldn't trust reality or yourself.dictionary.com definiton of reality - trying to save some people some time

wilbjammin

I'm a Social Studies teacher and I don't sugarcoat history. I let the students know where I think textbooks are failing them, and I try to bring in different perspectives of all events. I always talk about what we can know, can't know, and how we can tell the difference. That is how history should be taught: as a fluid subject that has been altered by time and politics. History is more about how it affects us as a sort of mythology than whether it is true or not - this is scary, but the more you confront that mythology, the more critical thinking and investigation happens... and hopefully that leads to better citizens in the process.

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Suave

I do understand what you mean. I was talking in the possibly naive hope that the scholarly people who write the textbooks would be a little more careful than the general public. I was also referring to the idea that, at least with peer-reviewed work, if someone is too far off base, others will deem the work unpublishable. I might just have too much faith in that system right now though, and I don't know if secondary school texts require peer review either. As far as the Orwellian feel of your new texts, I can't say I'm surprised, with what I know of the current US administration.

tiberry

Another good point...Here in Korea, there is a great deal of discussion on how the Japanese have advocated changing their school books to reflect a "kinder gentler" outlook on the Japanese occupation of Korea. The Korean's are outraged as it seems to downplay their perception of the horrible attrocities like rape and murder that occured under Japanese rule.

Its all relative to the observer. This is true on both the larger social scale and the individual scale...hence Halx's position that the only thing that really matters is what you think about a particular experience. I couldn't agree more.

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adam

I think you are over-reacting. Little can be known with 100% certainty, but much can be known with significant probability. Life is lived in the grey area.

zen_tom

I think a lot of people are missing the point.

How many people here are proud of their country? Or their race? Or the fact that they come from a good family? Whatever, pride or identification with something you had nothing to do with, that you can only have been told about, or learnt, or seen on TV is something that is a very powerful social and political force, and I'd think that most of the time it is wrong.

Identifying with the Founding Fathers, or the English Aristocracy, or the KKK (and adopting their traditional emnities) just because you happened to be born in a particular location, to particular parents is a very short-sighted way of looking at the world.

Not that anyone is doing that here, but I'm sure we can all think of people we've met, known, or are currently running for president who appear to hold these arbitrary beliefs. I'm also sure that many of us would find things that we hold true about ourselves that wouldn't stand up to scrutiny because we've assimilated them as we've grown up.

adam

Good essay in that vein: What You Can't Say.

Zeraph

"The moral of this is: have pride in yourself and only yourself, for it is the only entity that you truly know."

I agree, but can you even have pride in yourself? How often does your opinion change of yourself? How well do you really know yourself?

"To know others is intelligence, to know thyself is wisdom" ~paraphrased

And to the person that said they can have pride in their children, well what about those children that turned into mass murderers and serial killers? Do you think their mother's said, "Nope, never had any pride in my kids, I knew they were Serial killers!" Heck no, they thought, and usually continue to think their kids are little angels.

What about those suicide bomber terrorists, Ill bet a lot of their mothers, and their supporters are proud of them. But who is right?

The truth is, there is no truth. Or if there is, it is a dynamic thing that is different for everyone.

Cynthetiq

without critical thinking there's no way to ever uncover facts.

Facts are about as truthful as one can get.

History is just that, a story. Facts surrounding the stories are the truths that one can see and find vis a vie archeology and sociology. That's one of the reasons why the Dead Sea Scrolls were such an important find as they can corroborate the stories in the Bible.

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