There are pages and pages of quotations about history in my Bartlett’s book of familiar quotations. Not a whole lot of them are familiar to me; in fact, not many of them are by people familiar to me, so I’m going with a couple I did recognize. The most modern one is by George Eliot (Marian Evans Cross) who said, “The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.”
Meaning I suppose, unless there is scandal, strife or notoriety in your past, you have nothing to make you unhappy and nothing to make you noteworthy.
Maybe this explains why the spin doctors keep trying to erase all the not-so-flattering things in the history of our country by neutralizing, hiding or just plain destroying all evidence of certain events, beliefs and even legislation we endorsed since becoming a nation. I can’t believe reasonable, educated people truly believe getting rid of all the “evidence” of our Civil War and our Civil Rights struggles will make us feel better about ourselves as a nation. I refuse to condone the destruction of artifacts, memorials, monuments and statues of Confederate leaders and soldiers. Who sincerely thinks doing so helps healing any remaining rift between the North and the South? That’s no longer the issue and rewriting history isn’t going to solve it.
Those Southern men and women, who gave or risked their lives, were Americans who fought to hold onto what had been an approved and admired way of life suddenly declared unacceptable. The whole lifestyle revolved around what the plantations could furnish for the rest of the nation and the wealth to be derived from international trade. Yes, slavery was wrong but had been around long before we had it and was hardly our original idea.
It may be simplistic, but I think the problem is not couched within our cultural history so much as in our primal make-up. We as humans are programmed to be wary of creatures who are different from ourselves. We are wired to fear and defend against the unfamiliar. Some of us, through conditioning and education, have learned to resist and overcome those impulses, to look beyond the surface, to find the commonalities deep within and settle for a more agreeable relationship with unfamiliar outsiders.
Over the course of history, there are a number of ethnic and racial groups deemed sufficiently “different” from the general population for one reason or another. The Irish, Orientals, Germans, Native Americans, to name just a few. When these people were easily identified because of language, skin color, religion, dress, distinctive features or other easily recognizable clues, prejudice flourished. As time passed and differences dwindled and became less noticeable, they became more generally accepted while intolerance faded. If I am right in my assumptions, racial intolerance and ethnic prejudice will come to an end only when we are all the same color, speak the same language and go to the same church. It will be a pity though, to find out how boring we all are when that day comes.
I’m not sure just who is responsible for first saying, “Those who ignore history are bound to repeat it.”
Several people are on record having written versions of that warning, and I think it has been restated so often because it is important and we often get too close to demonstrating the truth of it. Our past year has shown just how little credence is given to disasters in our past and how reluctant we appear to be toward taking that advice. Did we learn from the flu epidemic during WWI? From the mass vaccinations helping eliminate diphtheria and smallpox? We suffered, struggled and eventually made it through the polio crisis that blotted my childhood and ruined many others. Today, while incredibly dedicated scientists managed to find hope for us in vaccines, too many people behave as if COVID-19 were no more than a slight head cold. When way over half a million Americans have died needlessly?
Oh, about the other quote I mentioned- it’s by Miguel de Cervantes; “History is a sacred thing so far as it contains truth.”
Need I say more?
A former volunteer and substitute teacher in the Solon schools, Milli is an artist and a poet living near Morse where she also creates unique greeting cards and handmade books.