I have always been a student of history in one way or another. Not necessarily in any academic sense (apart from during my school and Sixth Form days) but more in the way of a deep fascination of time and what happened before I came into being. As I grew older I came to understand that we as both individuals and as communities, countries and cultures are nothing more than the sum of the experiences and achievements of those who came before us. Without the efforts of thousands of generations striving for a better existence for themselves and their offspring we would still be living in caves and in trees hiding from the many and varied threats to us we have, now over multiple millennia, mastered. But how many of us today understand this and can truly be in awe of those achievements which allow us to live safely and comfortably within the secure bubble of technology, knowing we only need to pick up our phone to order food to be delivered almost instantly to our door and gorge ourselves while watching endless hours of entertainment again, instantly delivered within seconds of our choosing how to be entertained.
In childhood the safety and comforts of modern western living are taken for granted however, as adults this should never be the case, yet it is for the vast majority. How many people wonder to themselves how come their standard of life is as good as it, what happened to make it so, we all realise that it was not always like this so how did it happen? In my experience that question is rarely asked by the individual of themselves. It happened so why bother finding out out? That question was one that haunted me and spurred me to find out. Initially I began with broad strokes, after all history is a large tome to get through so it was always easier to begin with chapter summaries. As I learned more I dug deeper and deeper into the chapters of that book and I became obsessed, I studied Ancient Greece and Rome, and found this question is as eternal as Rome itself when I first read Cicero’s words,
“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”
To know that the wise of antiquity considered this very concept underlined for me the immense importance of knowing where we came from, why we live as we do, why we think as we do and why we act as we do. Without the knowledge of what preceded us how can we claim to have free will? Without knowing who came before us and why they created the values in the culture into which we were born and in which we live, how can we question it? How can we know if we have become truly self aware and self governing individuals without knowing who programmed our culture and their reasons for doing it so? Freedom of thought without discarding or at least being aware of, the shackles binding us to less enlightened times is impossible. I realised I did want to question it, I realised that without doing so enslaves us to the puppet masters who did understand.
Nothing I have discussed here is new, I do not believe I have made any original statements and anyone who is intelligent enough to understand, or be interested in what I’m saying already knows these truths. I am simply introducing this blog and presenting the reasons for why I am writing it. Whether it is read or not I do not care, it is more an exercise in self indulgence and an avenue to express my fascination of history and indeed its endless minutiae. I won't necessarily be presenting things in any sort of strict timeline. It is not written as an educational or academic resource, more as a way to help me organise what I know or have learned, take from it what you will. I will add references where possible which I would encourage you to investigate.
I am not a revisionist, I will not deny things happened as they did. Yes, atrocities where visited upon the native inhabitants of this country, as they were to the indigenous inhabitants of all countries touched by European expansionism across the world, but I do not believe the tearing down of statues and the quiet removal from history of the names of people who did what they did is the answer. What those who believe this revisionist path is the right one to follow do not understand is that to remove the faces and stories of those who offend them is, in generational time, to forget the very events for which they are now pilloried in our modern society. The revisionists react against the shame they feel being the decedents of that colonialist past, their reaction is a way for them to relieve the guilt they feel and to allow them, by this simple act of rejecting and effectively deleting their forefathers, to feel better about themselves as it seems to me that the most important thing to a revisionist is feeling better about themselves. This is a particularly shallow and selfish way to deal with the importance of history and is the most dangerous thing that can be done if we wish to avoid repeating the mistakes of our forefathers. We can wring our hands as much as we like at the behaviour of the invading colonists, the slave traders, the slave owners etc. etc. but what we can not do is forget them, as we should never forget the words of Cicero.
I will end this introduction by clarifying that I only mean to consider the general history of Australia in this blog but will delve into some detail now and again when I can, a more in-depth study would take more time than I have to spare, I have a full time job as well as a mortgage to pay and not many blogs will pay the mortgage…
No comments:
Post a Comment