(Previously posted in an abbreviated form on Ariel’s blog under the Sunday Stories segment as A Past Altered on April 12th, 2020.)
Introduction
Election season is in full swing. Everyone is posting about this or that that’s got their hackles up thanks to something “the other side” has done. As they have been, I’ve been watching what people on both sides are saying. And while I think that both sides sometimes have good points, I’m alarmed by what I see. The world today often looks like that of 1984 by Orwell, particularly in the area of the past altered by those in power. Seeing how many parallels there are between the world Orwell presents in the book and our own world is horrifying.
Scrolling through the comments on political posts or my newsfeed on Facebook reveals an overwhelming proliferation of ignorance. Yes, you heard right. Ignorance. Both groups are well informed about what they can’t stand about the other side. They know precisely what their side has done that they may or may not be thrilled about. They know the newest things Trump has done to make the liberals angry and some conservatives happy. Most conservatives know all about Sanders dropping out of the running and rejoiced when it happened.
However, they are otherwise ignorant about the past. If they understood the heart of the issues facing us, they wouldn’t be sitting there arguing. They would understand that both sides as they now are will destroy us even if the rate of destruction is different.
The Basis for This Statement on the Ignorance of the Past?
You may wonder now how I can say this or how we came to this point of the past being altered and unknown. In answer to your first question, I can say this because I can observe what is happening around me and compare it to the primary sources on both sides. In answer to the second, history will tell us this very thing if we bother to look. It is not an issue of understanding the how so long as we will look. I understand, as Orwell said in 1984, the how, but I do not understand the why.
Before you shut out what I am saying, please give me a fair hearing and engage your mind’s ability to reason. This is not about just one political party. This is not about conservatives versus liberals. It cannot be about that when both parties are to blame for the problem I am focusing on here. The observations made about both groups via their political commentaries are only symptoms of the problem, not the true heart of it. The problem we are focusing on here is on the past and why it must be preserved in full truth as far as is possible.
My Bias
No honest person says they do not have any bias. Every good author must also admit to what that bias is. So, in the interest of honesty, reason, and transparency, let me share my bias up front. Do with it what you please.
Growing up, I was homeschooled from start to finish in a Christian home. Now, my more liberal readers may be tempted to assume that means I am brainwashed and do not know anything. I will not say you all are tempted to do that. Some of you may appreciate a fellow rational mind and be unwilling to judge until you have listened. However, I have heard the accusation enough from liberals to know that is their general consensus about homeschoolers. An opinion is often formed of me based solely on the fact that I was homeschooled and an a Christian. I am then given no forum to speak because I am judged evil by these individuals.
A Point for Your Consideration
May I suggest to you a point of consideration? For those who grew up reading the firsthand accounts of history from both the victor and the defeated, it is also easy to look at you, listen to the “facts” you rattle off from the history textbooks you were taught to believe, and shake our heads. We think, in fact, the exact same thing of you as you do of us. However, we take it a step further and believe you have abandoned reason because you consider no viewpoint but those the same as or close to your own.
We understand, of course, how you can believe something so strongly. It is all you have ever been taught, all you know. This is the same as the way firsthand accounts are the main source of history we have been taught to use. We too could shake our heads at you in derision or in pity as you do to us.
Common Ground
But do people on both sides of the argument not understand that reaction? I am certain all of us have been ridiculed solely on the basis of who we are and not what we think. Both sides do it all the time. And can we not respect a person who is clearly intelligent and holds an opposing view even as we wonder how they could be so misled? We do it all the time. Agree to disagree, right?
In The End…
My point is this. You may look at the other side and shake your head. You may think them brainless fools for holding onto something that is so clearly “false” to your way of thinking. While you are, they are doing the same to you, and it gets no one anywhere. Express your disbelief in the “stupidity” of others if you must. At times, all rational beings will question how another can think something that is wrong. At times, any moral being will look at the immoral acts of fellow beings, wondering if they know what they are doing. We may look at them with disbelief, hardly able to believe another human capable of such evil knowingly.
At times, these may be the right responses. There are some things so unbelievable foolish or so unbelievably evil that we cannot give them the gift of validation. However, we must remember that, to some degree, there are some areas that are not black and right. The middle view may, at times, be the right one and either extreme in the wrong on various points. Do not forget, there are always two sides to every story.
Philosopher or Historian – Approaches to the Past
Because my parents placed such an emphasis on firsthand accounts and balanced sources, I learned that a true historian is one who observes all evidence before him of both winning and losing sides and presents the facts as they are. The true historian does not attempt to put a spin on those facts but strives to avoid doing so.
It is the realm of philosophers and thinkers to review that presentation of fact. They are then to use rationality to interpret them so that we can determine how to live in light of them. Every man should be both a philosopher and a historian, but not at the same time. We start as the historian, digging for the facts as the facts are and taking them as we find them. We then look at what we find and become a philosopher using our rationality to interpret what we have found.
Why Mainstream History Textbooks Are Unreliable
At one point last year, my parents’ goal to show us history from the primary source took us to Texas. We drove down from Illinois, and along the way, we took the time to visit national park after national park. We read the plaques, walked the grounds where historic moments occurred, and read what the people of those days had to say about their stories and why things happened.
Not Matching Up With the Past
Sadly, time and again, the textbooks do not fit what the primary sources say. They are filled with inaccurate interpretations because the writers were philosophers, not historians. How have our history textbooks been filled with such outright fallacies?
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, this is no an accident. People altered the records. Lies do not self-propagate with no origin point. The victors write the history books, as they say, and they most certainly did in this case. We ought to stop worrying about what one side or the other is doing and start worrying about the real problem. What has happened to the American people and their reason?
Where the Blame Lies for Forgetting the Past
We have elected officials, on both sides, who have supported changing the records of history as taught in our schools to our children. We allowed our children to be taught lies as if they are truth, and we did nothing.
We have even participated actively in removing the influences that might undermine the social conditioning and the lies our government is encouraging. As Orwell said in 1984, “Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future” (Orwell, 1984). He could not be more right. Most disturbingly, we reached this point because we allowed it. We ourselves bear the greatest blame for ever allowing this.
That Will Never Be Us
People argue that we will never end up like Orwell’s society in 1984. We will not allow the altering every record to fit the government’s chosen narrative or the controlling of all information–even the very minds of our people. However, we are already well on the road to that. Maybe it has not gotten that bad, but if we do not wake up, it is going to. We should not expect, friends, to walk the same road of destruction others did, refuse to turn around, and then not end up at the same disastrous end that they did at some point.
Where We Now Are Having Ignored the Past
We are already doing the same things he warned us about on a small scale. The country we know today is not a country our Founding Fathers would be proud of. Our federal government has more power than it ever should have, and every day they take more. We do not notice it because it seems insignificant or necessary to us at the time, but Orwell could not have said it better when he stated, “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end” (Orwell, 1984).
We have reached a point where we look at the warnings embedded into books like 1984 or Animal Farm, at the warnings in the non-fiction writings of so many who lived during the time when socialism, fascism, communism, and more were emerging, and think, that it will not ever happen to us. We can use those systems and not end up like them. Why do we think this? Because we do not know history or else we do not know reason. Not knowing history is, in particular, the biggest thing to blame in most of the cases I have observed.
Why We Do Not Know The Past
Schools are not teaching our kids history. They teach propaganda on both sides of the fence. I am not blaming it on the teachers. They do not decide the curriculum, at least in public school. At this point, the prevailing voices promoting lies call the ones who fight to keep the truth in our schools ignorant for wanting to promote reality instead of this new unreality that exists only in the minds of those buying into it. The ones who do not fight back often do not even know the truth themselves because they too were taught a lie.
During my time in a secular community college, a fundamental Christian college, and watching the opinions of both sides I have learned an important lesson. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. We have chosen not to know or to teach our history in the past generations, and now we must pay for it for we are doomed to repeat our mistakes.
Willfully Ignorance of the Past
I know this is not a popular opinion. It is not a popular statement. No one wants to hear that they willingly chose to be ignorant. However, this is the reality of it, and as I refuse to lie about reality, I state it clearly: we as a country have chosen to be ignorant because we do not want to see reality. We prefer the lie for any number of our own reasons, but our reason does not negate our blame.
If you choose to accept what your history textbook says without checking the “facts” presented against a primary source, you have chosen to rely on someone else’s word for your own heritage and your own country’s history. You have chosen, then, to remain ignorant of the voices of those who lived through it, which reach beyond the grave to dispense their warnings, wisdom, and truths. You chose that. And so, then, you are responsible in part for the current state of affairs where we squabble over things that are symptoms of a larger problem, not the real root of the problem.
A Wake Up Call From the Past for the Present
To those who still know what I am talking about when I quote Orwell, it is time to wake up. It is time for you to face the music. I do not care what side you are on. If you keep refusing to turn to the unaltered past, you are responsible for what happens as a result. You are responsible for the decline and eventual destruction of your country as you know it. I cannot speak to how things are in other countries as of now. I do not know whether their history in schools matches history as told by the primary sources and the archaeological records. I can, however, speak for America because I have seen it firsthand, and it is horrifying.
In twenty years, how much more will history have changed? Will you even realize that it has changed? Did you pay enough attention to educating yourself and thinking for yourself–no matter what political party you belonged to or where you were schooled–to notice when those “facts” change yet again? For most people I have spoken to on history, the answer is a clear no. Is yours? Do you even care if the “facts” change until no one knows what is true anymore?
The Solution–If We Want It
We need to wake up and realize what is going on. We need to turn back to educating ourselves and our children on the real history and how things happened. The national parks and museums are one place to start. The firsthand accounts of people like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and other famous leaders and individuals in our country’s history are another place to start. Books written by those who both won and lost on either side of the major events in our history are a must. It is not as though it is really difficult, though it will require mental exercise and purposeful intent to learn the truth from those who have spent a lifetime ignoring it and dismissing it as unimportant.
Learn To Think and Aspire to More
History has all kinds of important lessons. Do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Learn from them. Find ways to do better than those who went behind us. You might be surprised at how much you discover that does not match with what the popular opinions of the day say about our history. Learn to be curious, to think, to aspire to know more, to understand the why not just the how.
If we want to preserve what little remains of our liberty and take back all that we lost, we must do all of this and do it now before it is too far gone. You do not have to contribute to a further downward spiral of ignorance of your own heritage. Take responsibility for finding out the truth and holding onto it even if people mock you for it or call you insane for doing so. After all, “Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad” (Orwell, 1984).
