Hello and welcome ray9,
Before I respond to your thread I would like to acquaint you with my Personal Ignore Policy because my rules are more strict than the site rules. Hopefully this is reasonable:
Personal Ignore Policy PIP: I like civil discourse. I will give you all the respect in the world if you respect me. Mouth off to me, or express overt racism, you will be PERMANENTLY Ignore Listed. Zero tolerance. No exceptions. I'll never read a word you write, even if quoted by another, nor respond to you, nor participate in your threads. ... Ignore the shallow. Cherish the thoughtful. Long Live Civil Discourse, Mutual Respect, and Good Debate! ps: Feel free to adopt my PIP. It works well.
If this is agreeable then I hope we have many interesting discussions. If not, we won't be talking long.
Originally Posted by
ray9
History gets a bum rap these days just as it did 50 years ago when I was still in school. It was boring to study all those past figures that wore wigs and strutted in funny clothing. In America we yawned as we learned about our escape from King George with citizens along with Indians dumping tea into a harbor. There was a Boston Massacre where some people died standing up for something. It was tedious and so long ago. I wanted to play my guitar in a rock band because I was distanced from that history by the arrow of time. I know now that I should have paid more attention to what others were trying to tell me.
History is a collective memory of how we got to where we are today. Mistakes were made. Repeating mistakes is the first rule of de-evolution and any living thing that does not learn from mistakes will vanish, Darwin made that clear. Ideas, beliefs, and cultural aggregations are like living things, they can evolve or devolve in the same way. Past mistakes can only be atoned by not repeating them; there is no way to undo past missteps.
If you step on a rock and twist your ankle you must suffer the consequences but your personal history establishes a record that warns you not to step on that rock again or any similar rock without care to avoid the same outcome. Historical events are no different. We memorialize them to remind others about the pitfalls of mistakes that came before them.
We are in a revolutionary moment in our history not unlike Banana Republics or ethnically-cleansing balkanizing federations in other countries. When Donald trump was elected on a platform of nationhood over globalization this energized globalists to take him out. Now some of our cities look like Kosovo or Caracas because Trump’s threat to the powerful people that have been selling us out is seen as dire.
This is accompanied by the cowardice of a Republican leadership that fears being exposed as recipients of the benefits of the insurrection and missing the boat of the side they think may win. Statues topple, monuments are defaced, and bedlam wracks our cities. This is not new. Venezuela went down the same way in recent history.
You see why history is so important? I wish I Had seen it all those years ago.
I didn't find history very interesting when I was in school either, but recently I have taken an increased interest. I like to read and also watch videos and programs. I have tried to figure out where the beginning of civilization was and it seems the most popular western idea is Mesopotamia, current day Iraq, something like 8 or 9 thousand years before Christ. Humans existed for thousands of years prior to that, but apparently as hunter / gatherers. Civilization does not seem to have changed much since Mesopotamia. The first civilizations were City-States and they both fought and traded with one another. It's almost comical how they traded lands. There would be a leader who mobilized an army to attack neighbors, but then could not hold what was taken, so the borders kept shifting constantly back and forth over the years. They all needed things from all over in the bronze age because the elements of copper and tin (to make bronze) were not found where there was good land for cultivation and food production.
And what has really changed since then besides technology? We still have no consensus on religion or morals. Logically, all humans on Earth should be part of one big collective. Physically, we are a big collective for the same reasons as the bronze age. So what on Earth is all the squabbling about? We all have the same basic needs. Most citizens of most countries don't really care where you are from. If you meet them, they are nice to you and they want the same things most of us want - to live and let live. So what's the problem? Egocentric leaders telling us we are different and we have to fight, basically. It is the rich and powerful who decide nations and peoples should fight, not the everyday people. People only hold hatred for others because they have been taught it.
As technology has advanced we have lots of fancy stuff and lots of people who get pretty mixed up about right and wrong. Plato had pretty good thoughts about right and wrong. Right is what is good for society. Wrong is bad for society. Nations don't matter. People do.
John Lennon had the right idea:
Personal Ignore Policy PIP: I like civil discourse. I will give you all the respect in the world if you respect me. Mouth off to me, or express overt racism, you will be PERMANENTLY Ignore Listed. Zero tolerance. No exceptions. I'll never read a word you write, even if quoted by another, nor respond to you, nor participate in your threads. ... Ignore the shallow. Cherish the thoughtful. Long Live Civil Discourse, Mutual Respect, and Good Debate! ps: Feel free to adopt my PIP. It works well.
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