‘Those who forget the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them.’
Who could argue with the commonsense displayed but if you never knew your history or the history - always written by the victor - was not the literal truth but just a sketching of events, polished by the viewpoint of the victor. What then? And what if that incomplete understanding of history weren’t confined to the last hundred years or so but extended back through the millennia.
What are the lessons of history apart from the retelling of dates and events, people and, of course, the creation myths which all peoples recall? I wonder about that.
I wonder about the rainbow serpent of Australia, the dragons of Wales. The same dragons in China yet dragons never existed in that fire breathing capacity so feared and revered by man.
Perhaps a flying, reptilian looking, dinosaur comes close in image but millions of years separate man from dinosaur - so I’m led to believe - and ‘fire breathing’ is an essential part of ‘dragonhood.’
There’s history in the billions of years of Earth’s geologic time and there’s the brief history of modern man as measured in 100,000 years or so. Within that geologic history appear ‘ Out of place artifacts’ - things that, by rights, shouldn’t exist within the context of where they were found. At the very least, my understanding of the world and human history, as taught me when young and before this present day in which I can roam the libraries and museums of the world without leaving this chair, is changed and open to question. But the limitations still arise when it comes to checking sources. It’s not possible for me to read The Mabinogion in Welsh and much the same for other sources. Not too much of a limitation with translations available.
‘If you don’t like the message, shoot the messenger.’ This ruthless approach to bad tidings or ‘good’ still applies. When I first read Velikovsky’s books and learnt something of the outcry and vilification which attended his work, I came across a slender book, title forgotten, which detailed exactly who and why this ‘shoot the messenger’ occurred. It’s a shameful inditement, a bowing to vested interest.
Velikovsky was a scholar across many adjacent fields. His work threatened so much of the established view that, if the message couldn’t be suppressed then destroy he who brings the message. It didn’t work. Velikovsky was quite happy to let time be the judge regarding the validity of his startling ideas.
‘Post truth’ and fake news. Much ‘news’ is facebook/fakebook news. It doesn’t have to be true. It just has to be repeated until it’s accepted.
I don’t live in a parallel universe but I do in that ‘Alice in Wonderland’ sense of living in a world where umpteen contradictory and mutually exclusive ideas are embraced along with breakfast.
That Israel should be outraged that its duplicity in regard to the continuing building of settlements on Palestinian land is exposed is no surprise. Bullies and thieves are always outraged. Israel - which Israel? The only country I know of where the borders expand. Sixty years and more of deceit and Israel is upset. It’s taken this long for America to chide an ally whose behaviour would not be tolerated anywhere on Earth without a chorus of condemnation.
‘Years end’ and happy new year. There was a sense of continuity in decades past when moving from year to year. It’s more fragile now. Anything can happen is a mood of the day. Both positive and negative.
My interest in the Britain which existed a few thousand years ago continues. I’ve found that books by Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett are hard to find and, thus, have relied on their youtube interviews to get a sense of their history, once dismissed and now revealed. I can’t check much as yet but have watched a series which details the skullduggery which both men endured as a ‘shoot the messenger’ scenario played out. Echoes of the treatment Velikovsky endured.
Why does any of this matter is another question. A sweeping away of cobwebs of belief based on incomplete knowledge and unconscious prejudice is an ongoing process throughout life. Or it is for me.