Essay on History
We live in a space of myths without noticing this fact. This space forms a tight ring around us, forcing us to see white in black, and vice versa. Sometimes veil of myth opens, and we see the disgusting mechanism of sophisticated manipulation of human consciousness. But new myths come on the place of outdated myths and new falsehood globally continues. Thus, we are going to discuss the concept of history as a place of myths’ development in this assignment.
It seems to me that the notion of “history” has a double meaning: it means what has happened in the past, but also the activities of the historian, cognition, representation, and training. It can be said that historian builds his conclusions on the material of historical sources. By this phrase we can understand all remnants of the past, which are associated with human activity and reflect the development of human society. This is a very extensive range of texts and artifacts from the fragments of ceramics to books. Thus, historical science reveals, reconstructs and interprets (explains) the historical facts.
Taking into account Loewen’s phrase that “Textbooks are often muddled by the conflicting desires to promote inquiry and to indoctrinate blind patriotism,” it is necessary to remember that history is written by people (Loewen 6). Everyone who creates historical texts thinks that changing one minor detail, he or she will not change anything important in the course of the history. Then historical sources are overwritten by other people for several times. New historians have the same thoughts and mistakes in historical events continue snowballing.
Loewen states that “[History] textbooks also keep students in the dark about the nature of history. History is a furious debate informed by evidence and reason,” and this statement allows to suppose that somebody or some power is interested to hide concrete historical facts or to replace them by new facts which are more pleasant or significant to perception (Loewen 7). Both Loewen and Zinn made a thorough analysis of American History and the birth of American nation, and they found a lot of mystifications in the course of historical events and their presentation to a wide public. Both scientists provide a refreshing look at the events of the past from the times of Columbus to the period of the Revolution, and demonstrated that ideology is very often prevailing over historical facts.
Educators consider that it is better to educate children on the approved school programs, where everything is understandable and historical figures are described as heroes with a proper set of positive personal qualities. But people are different by their nature, and there are no completely positive or negative individuals and personal traits influence on people’s decisions and then on actions, so many historical facts that are hidden by high motives have other characteristics as well as there always exists a reverse side in any event. For instance, a well-known holiday such as Thanksgiving Day can be considered a celebration of ethnocentrism and there exist many facts that forced people to accept this position.
To conclude, it is hard to argue the fact that many history textbooks present the facts only from one side to show people what they want to see and hiding the truth. There exist many reasons for such attitude, beginning with ideological motives and ending with specific purposes of people who have power. But in order to achieve progress in the society’s development, people need to realize that there exists another history that was not taught at schools, so every event should be explored from different sides before accepting it as the truth. People need to realize that history has many ugly facts and only accepting them, it is possible to avoid the same mistakes in the future and create a long-term progress in the development of highly-technological and civilized society.
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