The History Conspiracy

Sometimes it scares me that the line between mythology and real history is getting so blurred. We all know how important it is to not forget history but when we no longer know what is real and what is a myth? We no longer know what is a bald faced lie and can no longer tell a good news source from a bad one. Add to that Partisanship and the disputes between cultures, religions and ideals and we can assume that most so called news stories are fabrications.

Then we have the Blogs, the worst of the bunch. One persons opinions based on their own biases and bad information probably gleaned from somebody's Blog.

How many young people are going to have a totally skewed perception of history, reality and the world thanks to the Internet? What kind of fantasy world are we being led into? Newspapers are going bankrupt, Libraries are deserted and Teachers now teach their own Politically influenced versions of facts rather than real facts. Teaching 5 year olds about sex has become more important than teaching the facts children need to succeed and have a chance in life.

Wait a minute - I've just defined a conspiracy

I've got to get back to my pet project. I'm trying to get a photo of the Leprechaun that lives in my back yard. I've never seen him and neither has anyone else, but I know he is there.

History is at the mercy of the historians.

Go far back enough and you can't decipher history from mythology. Troy is a good example of this.

reply to post by asmeone2


Yes I know. History has always been subjective, but now. Before the Internet something had to be at least worthy of going into print. Now?

Originally posted by Blaine91555
reply to post by asmeone2

 

Yes I know. History has always been subjective, but now. Before the Internet something had to be at least worthy of going into print. Now?

I think it's better now. Maybe you might not get "honest" journalism but the internet can give you a video or recording or webcame that you could never have had in times past.

Take the gaza situation... many people protest that specifically because of what tey have seen on the internet. In times past I do not think it would have become so divisive.

reply to post by asmeone2


Where I see the most problems is in the purposeful propaganda that is rampant on the Internet. The person on the keyboard may have the best of intentions but combine emotion with the ability for a rank amateur to produce a professional site?

As I go through searches for information I'm overwhelmed with the number of news sources and no way to tell which ones are telling the truth and which ones are not.

There was a time, not more than a couple of decades ago, that you could read the news reports and they contained facts minus opinion. The commentary was on the Op-Ed page. Now you can no longer tell the difference and on the Internet the reporter might be an agent of a government or a 40 year old child in his Mothers basement typing away.

I guess the real answer is to not accept anything as fact unless it is proven and that is sad. How does a young person with no life experience glean the difference between fact and fiction?

Originally posted by Blaine91555
reply to post by asmeone2

 

Yes I know. History has always been subjective, but now. Before the Internet something had to be at least worthy of going into print. Now?

The truth is that history is told (and controlled) by the wealthy. Who else has time to devote years writing a 2k page book about some historical event or period? Usually, history books are either written by a professor commissioned by some wealthy "philanthropist" or by a particularly studious and probably quite boring member of a wealthy family.

If you look at the our "history" of the middle ages, you find that people were all hot and bothered about the church. Every single writing talks about or relates in some way to the church. People were going to or coming from mass and church matters were the most important thing in the people's lives.

But this is all a huge historical lie.

We know that church attendance, even during the height of the dark ages, was about the same 10-20% that it is today. We also know that people didn't care too much for what the church was doing. Why would they? The average person was struggling to survive horrible agriculture practices and avoid the war-of-the-week.

What we read as history is actually a very specific class history. We only read about the people and events that are important to the wealthy class.

The wealthy spent a lot of time in churches and interacting with church officials. They had to. The church was basically the UN of medieval Europe.

It was the wealthy class that were required to be involved in the rituals and the pageantry - their social status depended on it.

Jon
EDIT: I forgot to make my point.

The printing press ushered in the first time in history that the average educated person was able to have their views heard and their experiences recorded. That invention allowed the people to create pamphlets expressing strange philosophies. Eventually, the pamphleteers would ignite a revolution - thereby creating history.

My point is that the internet is only the second time in history that the average person has been given the tools to tell their story. Those crazy blogs and emotional forum posts are actually the beginning of a new revolution. For the first time in history, history will be more than the biographies of tyrants and empires.

Not all blogs are equal. Some, like the ones at blog.mises.org..., are well researched, well written, and have a consistent underlying philosophy that is refreshing.

[edit on 1.20.2009 by Voxel]

Actually, the Romans invented the science of history. Then it was forgotten until the early 1800's when it became a science again and was headed by morons who thought that anyone who came before them were idiots.

Case in point, Irving Washington ("The Legend of Sleepy Hollow") turned Columbus into a hero by completely reinventing his story. In this book, Washington mentions that Europeans did not cross the Atlantic before Columbus because they believed the Earth was flat. And even today, this is taught in schools around the Western World.

Think about it; this implies that nobody ever sailed on any large body of water, nobody ever climbed a mountain and nobody ever went into a large plain... Try it yourself, from any of these vantage points, it's impossible not to realize the Earth is round.

Washington was the first ever person in history to write that people believed the Earth to be flat. All the rest of history, as it is being taught, comes from people like him.

So, in regards to what you're saying, I really don't believe bloggers can do much historical damage. Especially when most people learn the facts through movies anyway.

I have a similar sentiment toward the historically challenged types that first formulate a belief, view or opinion of the world and there after decide how history took place
And I find it even more intolerable those that discard history completely, believing its all false and tainted… what like you know history better then the people that lived in that time and place and wrote about it? Oh it must be because of your “modern” enlightenment, you know much better because you have evolved into an all knowing intellect thanks to science, technology and psychology… which you probably don’t know much about anyways
a good example of historical manipulation might be the novel “1421”
the year China discovered America apparently Mr Gaven Menzies a former naval captain discovered new evidence and decided to write a semi fictional book and made a lot of $$$, then China’s Communist Regime jumps on board and starts funding the idea as truth, in fact the Chinese President Hu made reference to the book when he visited Australia and spoke to parliament, he said this
“Back in the 1420s, the expeditionary fleets of China's Ming Dynasty reached Australian shores. For centuries, the Chinese sailed across vast seas and settled down in what they called Southern Land, or today's Australia. They brought Chinese culture to this land and lived harmoniously with the local people, contributing their proud share to Australia's economy, society and its thriving pluralistic culture. “
Is that so? And where is the archeological, cultural, racial evidence of this? In Dan Menzies’ book of course.
Other pathetic historical manipulations
Darwinism, Darwin explained the mechanism for evolution between species, not an explanation for life as an accident evolving for a single celled organism
Galleleo vs Church, now viewed as Science vs Church ...stupid manipulation
The Davinci code, just plain stupid.
Mormons, no comment.

The Current of History Runs Surest in the Mainstream

The last two posters above me give examples of historical errors that became accepted as folklore and even incorporated into the official story (taught in schools, etc.) Of course, this has happened many times.

Their examples also show that often, in time, these errors come to be corrected. For example, we know now that Columbus did not 'discover' the New World but was preceded on its shores by many others, from Asiatics who crossed the Bering Straits some time in prehistory to the Norsemen who tried unsuccessfully to settle 'Vinland' a few centuries before Christopher.

How is it that we know better? We know because there exists a study of history in which scholars seek to reconstruct 'what really happened' from fragmentary original sources. It is very hard work and the results are endlessly controversial, but over time a consensus emerges. This, for better or worse, becomes the current account of history. At all times, it is susceptible to alteration by new discoveries and new studies.

It is this core of (relatively) trustworthy historical knowledge that is our touchstone of reality, our talisman against the baleful influences of propaganda and myth.

We need not fear that it is slanted, except by the prejudices of our age (which we cannot help). It is true that many historians are funded by groups that have an interest in their findings, but there are so many such groups, all with conflicting interests, and such a large number of independent researchers besides, that they cancel one another out and keep one another honest. Above all, they correct each other's errors. I wonder whether future scholars will concur that the Chinese discovered America; I suspect not.

I understand that I am arguing for the orthodoxy here, but then I love reading history.

And speaking of historical errors, here's one:

Actually, the Romans invented the science of history. Then it was forgotten until the early 1800's when it became a science again and was headed by morons who thought that anyone who came before them were idiots.

It is generally agreed that the first book of history in the western tradition - that is, an account of the past in which the writer took pains to find out what really happened, as best he could, from available sources, rather than relying only on tradition and myth - was written around 430BC by the Ionian Greek gentleman traveller Herodotus. Other Greeks wrote historical works of one kind or another; Xenophon's memoirs and accounts of the history of his times are justly famed, though not always very reliable. The doyen of Greek historians was Thucidydes of Athens, whose Peloponnesian Wars, published around 395BC, is often called the first 'scientific' work of history.

It is true that the Romans were very keen on history. I believe they invented the writing of annals. And while the study of history may have been, as the poster says, forgotten in the West, it was alive and well in the Islamic world, thanks to the tradition of hadith, and it developed, by the fourteenth century, into a truly scientific approach to historiography and sociology. The Chinese historiographical tradition is also quite substantial.

Even in the West, histories of a sort kept being written, even through the Dark Ages - histories of the Church, mostly, like Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, published around 730AD.

reply to post by Voxel

My point is that the internet is only the second time in history that the average person has been given the tools to tell their story. Those crazy blogs and emotional forum posts are actually the beginning of a new revolution.

No, they are merely the babble of the rabble down in the bazaar. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Ordinary people are just as prone to tell lies, to rationalize, to distort the truth in their own interest and to indulge in self-promotion and mythmaking as 'tyrants and empires' are. And they have just as much motivation to do so.

So how are their outpourings, as dense and as variegated as the components of Manila's Smokey Mountain, any closer to the truth than the work of those who make a proper study of history? No doubt there are nuggets to be found amid the swill, but who is going to look for them? That would be a job for professional historians - ones with really well-tamed gag reflexes.