Comment on People can't truly understand history they haven't lived.
MacedWindow@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Do you think there is anything that can be done about it? It seems like that thats just kind of a fact of life. Thats why sourcing facts is so important, its the only real option for knowing what is most likely true.
Also I feel like there are many issues I did not personally face but that I understand the importance. I never lived through the great depression but I can understand why its important to have savings for hard times.
Not trying to argue just discuss.
PassingThrough@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Thanks for stopping by!
I’m…not actually sure. You’re right it seems to just be a fact of life. I was recently in a long winded political discussion about the current times, things like the whitewashing of slavery in history and how we seem to be on a road to fascism even though we’ve seen it all before and how people can care so little.
Some alternative facts got invoked that the guy seemed like he truly believed, and when the actual facts were present their sources were challenged and…it led down the rabbit hole of what makes our sources more right than his? Because someone said so?
It clicked for me that propaganda works, he truly believed his version of history, and even my version was just books someone wrote that I was raised to believe were the right ones. I have never been a slave, despite what people are starting to call employment, I have never known a slave. I only believe slavery was a horrible tragedy because a book told me so. I will never share the same level of care on the issue as someone who is or even directly knew someone affected. And with only a different book I could have very easily ended up just like him, as so many already have, believing in race replacement theories and reversals of oppression and whatnot. How can such different concepts both exist as facts? Because neither have true substance, only belief.
I guess all we can do is keep fighting the good fight for knowledge, keep any one side from choosing what we learn, hoping that in a tenuous balance we get the most fair education we can, and, if there is indeed a biological or literal inability to emphasize with recorded history, we need to come up with different ways to teach important concepts without relying on acceptance of history as fact. And/or learn as a society to accept that apathy to a problem is OK as time wears on.
Other than that I’m not sure what we can do. It does seem rather bleak watching society self-destruct over things that seem to have historical warning but it isn’t so clear for others, despite us all technically sharing the same world history. And it’s only getting worse as politics and religions invade our educations(again?).