History: rough draft, please read and review

It must have been when I heard Winston Churchill, played by Albert Finney in the 2002 movie The Gathering Storm, said "We must act decisively...If we do not, history will cast its verdict with those terrible, chilling words, 'too late'" that I realized what history is to many people: a grave warning that, although affected by the actions of the great, is completely beyond our real control. Personally, I believe these people are only half right.

I�m sure most people have heard of that often-overused saying, �Those who do not learn their history will be doomed to repeat it? This dire cautionary axiom to both students and the great leaders illustrates what history has become in the classroom�A caution preventing past mistakes from being repeated; stories that are told with some lesson or moral to be learned; simply, a warning. The problem with these �stories? of course, is that the real lesson or moral to be learned is difficult to figure out and, in the meantime, are manipulated for personal gain by politicians to draw support for an idea or this or that. There is no doubt that history can be manipulated by the person telling it. Personal opinions and beliefs will never fail to break characters and events in a story into the �good?and the �bad?

So can history truly ever be completely objective? Well, objective in what sense? If the historian pieces history together and claims he has not let his personal opinions or emotions affect the �history?he has written, is it worth reading at all? We are human and the people in our textbooks were human as well and our history should be human�so why do we expect our historians not to be? Why do we expect our historians to not exaggerate and just teach history �as it is? The reason is simple: our minds are too pliable. Historians possess a power so great yet so simple that it is often overlooked. The words of the men and women who write the textbooks that we study in classes mould and shape the way we see things, the world, and even ourselves. Essentially, their opinions become our opinions and an opinion is a powerful thing. The more objective a historian can be, the more free we are to come up with our own opinion�no, our own informed opinion.

Now, wait a minute�own and informed opinion? That�s going to take a lot of work. In fact, the only real way for us to develop our own and educated opinion would be to become historians ourselves. The information we receive would have to come not only from the media and textbooks, but also from primary documents and from the mouths of the witnesses themselves. No�even more than that. In fact, we would have to speak with at least one person that we believe would sufficiently represent the thoughts and beliefs of each group of people that ever experienced the situation and steal the drawings of children from under their beds and then decipher what their various experiences meant! We would then have to ask a second or even third person if they agreed that what the first person we asked in their group about the situation thought of about the situation was indeed what they thought of the situation as well and if not�oh the complications! But that�s too much work! Let us instead settle down in our La-Z-Boyz, turn on our Ikea lamps with the light-blue lampshades and read what some other intellect or fool has decided our opinions should be and if that intellect was indeed actually a fool, then let us be fools too! A textbook purely of dates and events may be free of subjective views and opinions but utterly worthless in our search of what it means to live and breathe humanity unless we are willing to decipher each event and date.

The �unfolding?of history suggests a pre-determined future and I, personally, cannot believe in that unless the �unfolding?meant simply the predictability of it all. If one was to completely understand history, it may then be possible for that same person to understand humanity so well that he would be able to predict event after event and there would then be no need to do anything because the outcome would already be known. Maybe history is forcedout of us with the pressure of events pushing us further into the future that is simply a constant attempt to mend or run from our past. And if our future really isn�t about the past, then what is it that drives us so willingly forward?

Both Hegel and Marx believed in the idea of �progress? the struggle through conflict, evolution, or what not to a Utopia. This seems to make sense but does progress actually exist? Every historical �story?appears to speak about yet another failed attempt to bring the world to some sort of perfection but does the world even get �better?after each attempt? Are we �progressing?towards a perfect world or do we simply end up back where we started or even further from the Utopia history seems to show that we seek? There is, of course, no accurate way to measure the �amount?of �Utopia?we have achieved. After all, how does one measure the world up against perfection�and what kind of perfection? Economical perfection? Social perfection? Happiness? Do we watch stars for vague directions towards our everlasting goal or ask the people what they want? �The individual is smart�people as a whole are stupid?so should the �every person?be asked what they want? Do they know what they want or will they simply ask for corn flakes and is that why the �Great Person?is needed to force them to think �yes, what you want is what we want? But maybe this is getting a little off topic?

The manipulation of �history?cannot be avoided. Indeed, perhaps that is what separates �history?from �data? the presence of sympathy or empathy�the presence of emotion. Historians, like anthropologists and archaeologists, retrieve data in various forms and attempt to interpret the morals and lessons embedded within each delicate strand that links us to our past. We can never understand completely what the past meant for the world because there are simply too many ways to look at it just as we can never understand the meaning of existence. Instead, perhaps we should step back and nod as the world rapidly changes around and because of us and learn to refrain from blaming the historian when history repeats itself time and time again. History, after all, is not simply a record of humanity�it is the attempt to understand humanity itself and perhaps our humanity, maybe like our history, simply cannot change.

-civi Jones (aka Bowinn)
April 14th, 2003

Her laughter snaps; crackle the desert sand
Clandestine society far from here
Raymon�the crow; cast shadows o�er the land
The empty skins of the dead from his ear.
Dare I cry; cry for her that lonely night
Separated from she by grains of blonde
I watched her take step and fall; heavy flight
And she flew in colours�though dim�till dawn.
And I wouldn�t trust her with a handshake
Though bright eyes may fool those, they naught for I
More of sorrow, not own, ne�er could she take
Clasp cold hands and watch an expert�she�lie.
By dead of night she�ll send Raymon without
He�ll find water to drown the green in drought.