Everybody’s got their history. Everybody’s got some saga that justifies being mean to someone else. Something 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 5,000 years ago. Armenians, Jews, homos.
History is a grudge factory that justifies any atrocity in the name of one that passed. Conservatives want to kill Muslims in the name of 9/11. Palestinians want to kill Israelis in the name of land taken in 1967. Israelis want to ethnically cleanse Israel from Palestinians in the name of God who “gave them” the land 5,000 years ago.
Get it?
I’m writing about history and its abuse at the hands of every vengeful despot. It provides the all-purpose excuse for the worst atrocities. Its erection rises to impale everyone who is close, but different.
History. A bunch of guys killing other guys, written by the winner. Words in a book.
The Bible, the single most deadly book in the world, is a history book. It starts on day zero and goes downhill from there.
Find a Jew. There’s a Holocaust museum. Talk to Catholics in Northern Ireland and you’ll wait ten seconds before Protestant Oppression in Irish History pops to the fore. Talk to an anarchist? The commies, what they did to us in the Spanish Civil War. In Africa, tribal histories resurface every few years, along with severed limbs and spilled intestines. People hate people they’ve never met. Why? History!
The solution is simple, and very New York. FUHGEDDABOUDIT!
Yeah. Ignore that history. Let it go. The Armenians’ 3 million, trumped by the Jews’ 8 million, trumped by Stalin’s 9 million, trumped by Mao’s—I dunno—a billion? It’s over. Start again. FUHGEDDABOUDIT!
The CIA tortured. G. W. Bush conspired. OK, show us the pictures. It’s important to know the truth, but then LET IT GO!
The future won’t right the past. “Justice” is revenge dressed in drag. Call in the Alzheimer’s! Start every day thinking about what’s gonna happen tomorrow. What you do now will make that day. Yesterday’s over. You won’t change it. Forget it.
—MYKEL BOARD
Mykel (bound to chair) endures public humiliation at some point in ancient history. Yes, that’s Civil War General Jello Biafra in the background.
Yes, Mykel, well said.
But, what is your opinion in regard to companies like Google that now have the growing ability to contextualize, rank, and edit all of human history? Do you have any fear of a Year Zero triggered by technology. We are reaching a precipice where it will no longer by regimes and governments that define history, or their religion zealot forebears. It will be companies that exploit the channels for how humans learn of history and current news. I think the generation coming of age now has a simplistic perspective of history that is strangely similar to what you are suggesting here. Black and white history (anything that occurred before 2001) and color history (anything that occurred after the advent of the iPhone and social “democratization”).
You conclude ” What you do now will make that day. Yesterday’s over. You won’t change it. Forget it.”
But that’s no longer accurate. Online, your yesterday, today, and even your tomorrow can be presented and edited simultaneously. ‘History’ is being documented and uploaded at a speed never seen before. I’d like to hear your opinion of how that changes things.