"The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history." ~Georg Hegel
Today in the United States of America, as people dismantle statues and monuments of our history, that quote seems appropriate. We seemed to have learned very little from history, and I'm wondering if we even bother teaching real history anymore.
You see, history is more nuanced than boiler plate slogans. It's not all black and white. People go to war for something, but they don't all do it for the same reason. There was this show that aired on one of those channels... National Geographic, History, Discovery.. I can't remember which one. It was called Seconds from Disaster. It's tagline red "Disasters don't just happen. They are a chain of critical events. Unravel the clues and countdown those final seconds from disaster." That's history. It's not one event, but multiple events, some happening years, even decades, before, that lead to that moment we all remember. And we try to boil it down to one thing, maybe because it's easier to understand. It's easier to understand the Revolutionary war in the context of Stamp Acts and Tea Acts. It's easier to understand the Civil War in the context of slavery and abolition. It's easier to view World War I as an event caused by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It's easier to blame World War II on Hitler and the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. None of those things accurately describe all the events and issues that lead to the final outcomes.
So I'm back to, do we even teach real history anymore? Real history requires more than one year to study. It's the only way to grasp the complexities that resulted in the fall of the Roman Empire. For a long time, Spain was the naval powerhouse of the oceans. When did it switch to the British Empire and why? You might think that's not all that important, but that rise of the British Empire is the reason we have a country today. Understanding that, and the Spanish conquests, are our history. Does anyone know why Napoleon decided to sell of what would become known as the Louisiana Purchase? Today we wouldn't call it such, but Alaska was once known as Seward's Folly. Turned out that 50 some odd years of cold war with the Soviet Empire (and that's what it was), made Seward look like a genius. Do people realize that New York abolished slavery before England did? That great British Empire didn't fully abolish slavery until 1833, some 30 years before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Funny enough, they allowed slavery to continue in areas controlled by the East India Company.
World War II was a direct result of the Treaty of Versailles. That treaty beat down the German people and their economy so badly that they were ripe for a savior, and Hitler convinced them he was exactly that. Pearl Harbor is what dragged the Americans, kicking and screaming, into the war, but that was a war that was predestined from the moment Versailles happened, twenty years before the German invasion of Poland that set off World War II.
Nuance. Details. Little tidbits of this and that. They count down the seconds from disaster and the seconds to glory. We've lost them. As we watch people tear down more and more statues and monuments, we are losing more of them. Monuments aren't always pretty. They don't just lift up our finer moments. They remind us of our darkest ones. We have them so we never forget. Auschwitz is still standing today, a horrific monument to mass genocide. Dachau is also. My son visited Dachau. He said he felt sick the whole time. It's not something he'll ever forget. People say the same when they visit the Holocaust Memorial, the battlefield at Gettysburg and the beaches in Normandy. Monuments to horrific times in our history.
If a statue has the power to offend you, we better start tearing down every single statue in our country,because I'm positive it offends someone. You can let it control you and you can tear it down, or you can stop and see how far we've come.
For one moment I'd like to speak directly to my bothers and sisters through Jesus Christ. People are flawed. Even great people. Moses, David, Solomon, Peter, Paul. These men, great giants of the Bible, were all flawed, deeply flawed. Should we erase them from our Bible? Do they no longer deserve a place in our religious heritage? If they still deserve that place, is it possible that our great, but deeply flawed founding fathers also still deserve a place? Or are they relegated to the dustbin of history, because we suddenly in the past 5 years, realized how flawed they were. If you didn't know that already, you've just learned the best argument against government control of education, because I learned that in a Christian School.
History can't be the thing we never learn from, because if it truly is that, then we are doomed to repeat it, again and again. More slavery, more genocide, more human rights violations. Taking down statues doesn't erase what happened, but it can erase it from the minds of the people who need most to remember where we were and how far we've come. People who need the nuance, the honest conversations, the uncomfortable truth.
History can't be....
Today in the United States of America, as people dismantle statues and monuments of our history, that quote seems appropriate. We seemed to have learned very little from history, and I'm wondering if we even bother teaching real history anymore.
You see, history is more nuanced than boiler plate slogans. It's not all black and white. People go to war for something, but they don't all do it for the same reason. There was this show that aired on one of those channels... National Geographic, History, Discovery.. I can't remember which one. It was called Seconds from Disaster. It's tagline red "Disasters don't just happen. They are a chain of critical events. Unravel the clues and countdown those final seconds from disaster." That's history. It's not one event, but multiple events, some happening years, even decades, before, that lead to that moment we all remember. And we try to boil it down to one thing, maybe because it's easier to understand. It's easier to understand the Revolutionary war in the context of Stamp Acts and Tea Acts. It's easier to understand the Civil War in the context of slavery and abolition. It's easier to view World War I as an event caused by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It's easier to blame World War II on Hitler and the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. None of those things accurately describe all the events and issues that lead to the final outcomes.
So I'm back to, do we even teach real history anymore? Real history requires more than one year to study. It's the only way to grasp the complexities that resulted in the fall of the Roman Empire. For a long time, Spain was the naval powerhouse of the oceans. When did it switch to the British Empire and why? You might think that's not all that important, but that rise of the British Empire is the reason we have a country today. Understanding that, and the Spanish conquests, are our history. Does anyone know why Napoleon decided to sell of what would become known as the Louisiana Purchase? Today we wouldn't call it such, but Alaska was once known as Seward's Folly. Turned out that 50 some odd years of cold war with the Soviet Empire (and that's what it was), made Seward look like a genius. Do people realize that New York abolished slavery before England did? That great British Empire didn't fully abolish slavery until 1833, some 30 years before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Funny enough, they allowed slavery to continue in areas controlled by the East India Company.
World War II was a direct result of the Treaty of Versailles. That treaty beat down the German people and their economy so badly that they were ripe for a savior, and Hitler convinced them he was exactly that. Pearl Harbor is what dragged the Americans, kicking and screaming, into the war, but that was a war that was predestined from the moment Versailles happened, twenty years before the German invasion of Poland that set off World War II.
Nuance. Details. Little tidbits of this and that. They count down the seconds from disaster and the seconds to glory. We've lost them. As we watch people tear down more and more statues and monuments, we are losing more of them. Monuments aren't always pretty. They don't just lift up our finer moments. They remind us of our darkest ones. We have them so we never forget. Auschwitz is still standing today, a horrific monument to mass genocide. Dachau is also. My son visited Dachau. He said he felt sick the whole time. It's not something he'll ever forget. People say the same when they visit the Holocaust Memorial, the battlefield at Gettysburg and the beaches in Normandy. Monuments to horrific times in our history.
If a statue has the power to offend you, we better start tearing down every single statue in our country,because I'm positive it offends someone. You can let it control you and you can tear it down, or you can stop and see how far we've come.
For one moment I'd like to speak directly to my bothers and sisters through Jesus Christ. People are flawed. Even great people. Moses, David, Solomon, Peter, Paul. These men, great giants of the Bible, were all flawed, deeply flawed. Should we erase them from our Bible? Do they no longer deserve a place in our religious heritage? If they still deserve that place, is it possible that our great, but deeply flawed founding fathers also still deserve a place? Or are they relegated to the dustbin of history, because we suddenly in the past 5 years, realized how flawed they were. If you didn't know that already, you've just learned the best argument against government control of education, because I learned that in a Christian School.
History can't be the thing we never learn from, because if it truly is that, then we are doomed to repeat it, again and again. More slavery, more genocide, more human rights violations. Taking down statues doesn't erase what happened, but it can erase it from the minds of the people who need most to remember where we were and how far we've come. People who need the nuance, the honest conversations, the uncomfortable truth.
History can't be....
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