“Ah – if only they knew.”
Hmm … first you’d have to have an interest in knowing – whatever the subject matter happens to be.
The daily news is full of Russia, North Korea, Syria – dastardly deeds done by the enemy. I don’t hold any country up as a bastion of freedom, an example of anything particularly positive, there’s always too much of ‘National Interest’ to take anything at face value.
The story of the USS Liberty is a case in point. Who knows about it? Who knows that Israel attacked a United States vessel, operating in international waters, or why Israel saw this action as being in their national interest? As much to the point, the reaction of the American government to this affair. Woeful. Ah – if only they knew.
It’s a ‘can of worms’ and I do understand why, for many, the news is generally too horrible to bother with, particularly so as the knowing about a subject doesn’t necessarily alter anything but does often give heartache to the person ‘knowing.’
In the wider picture of the history of the planet, the theory named Uniformity still holds sway in the world regardless of the fact that geology, folk lore, real evidence contradicts the idea proposed by Uniformity and that idea suggests that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now have always done so and apply everywhere throughout the universe. There’s no evidence that this is the truth but it’s very comforting to hold that view.
Velikovsky proved through his painstaking research that catastrophe is our common inheritance but this ran counter to the life’s work of a few powerful academics who did everything in their power to bury his work. And history is littered with such actions.
I don’t know about ‘saving grace’ but that peculiarity within our human condition known as humour is perhaps all that allows us to keep some semblance of sanity.
I’ve just finished a journey through parts of England and Wales – one that I doubt I’ll ever afford again - in which the book ‘The Holy Kingdom’ served as a roadmap of sorts, an alternative history to that generally accepted, in which a real King Arthur lived – two, in fact, - one who fought the Romans and one who fought the Saxons. Again the work is researched and again it runs counter to one in which academics have a self interest in denying.
As a delightful counter balance to the mish-mash of half truths and lies, slanted viewpoints and bigotry which are often the basis of history, I’ve had one of Terry Deary’s ‘Horrible Histories’ to warm my heart while travelling. ‘Horrible Histories Wales.’
If I were to offer a gift to some alien race, apart from the mandatory works of Shakespeare, I’d offer ‘The Life of Brian’ and ‘Horrible Histories’ both of which point out the absurdities, humour and casual cruelty which go with ‘being human.’