Looking closer, it becomes more obvious the current obsession is judging the past in terms of the present, and especially taking a biased selection of past events to confirm present narrative. It's true that much of public education glosses over, or ignores anything other than signal events. We learn that the Pilgrims came to New England, but we don't look at daily life for Native or Euro-Americans. We learn that the Civil War was about States Rights, specifically the right to own slaves, but we don't hear much in the voice of former slaves, or drafted Union soldiers, or immigrant New England housewives back home for that matter. However, all this so called hidden information is actually there if we look. The issue isn't that it is being suppressed, but that it is being ignored. The problem isn't that it is dangerous to teach it, but that it is easier to not pay attention, not in favor of some dominant power structure, but simple distraction, at all levels, including those who hold fashionably negative views about the colonial past. Thus just as manifest destiny and inherent superiority did two centuries ago, narrative masked as justice fills in now.
The reality is this oversimplification of understanding, in-group favoritism as defined by whatever the fashion of the day is, and corresponding rejection of those who are not "in" combined with ignorance of history to justify current bias is nothing new. The Greeks and Romans, and the Egyptians and Sumerians before them had their iconoclasts, cultural awakenings, and progressive regimes seeking to usher in a utopia, as has every other long lived mass civilization to our present day. Meanwhile, a glance at history simply confirms this.
A glance at history also confirms the futility of these efforts. Even though the arch of progress is positive, the down trends carry away far more lives the higher up it goes. Just look at the signal events, which are mostly related to wars. However, we must look past signal events here too to see the whole story.
The further truth to refute the dangerous notion of inherent superiority is fairly simple for the majority of us to find if we simply look at our own families. It is a fortunate and possibly non-existent person who, growing up, had no bad experiences, was never disappointed by parents or siblings, does not have an aunt or uncle who is broken in some way, does not have criminals in the extended family to name a few banal examples. Going farther back, in every culture, in every period in recorded history to include the current one there were rapists, murders, slavers, drunks, prostitutes, war criminals, abusers, womanizers, oppressors, losers, outcasts, slaves, and even sacrificial victims. Many of these people had children. It is staggeringly likely that all of us carry the genes of such ancestors, if not in living memory, at some point in our family story. Jesus certainly did, and they are named in His genealogy.
We are all, at some point the product of those who have done evil, who have contributed to those down trends in the arch of progress, and certainly from their victims as well. If we look even closer, we will find we too fall short of any sort of ideal imaginable. We have all hurt, been hurt, manipulated, been played, and carry scars, regrets, pain and disappointment. Suffering, though more spectacular for some than others, is a universal human experience, and so is committing evil.
However, here we are. Some better off, some homeless alcoholics. Some freeing the oppressed, some recovering from trauma. Some trying to mend their wrongs, and some still ignorant of theirs. We substitute narrative for reality to make sense of it. To bring purpose to the pain and suffering. But it is a delusion when it doesn't attempt to take into account as much of reality as it can. If we aren't careful, we descend into vengeful, petty, self centered, and self imposed suffering. The alternative is freedom, as no one can compel us to to respond any other way than we will to a circumstance.
Thus the narrative I substitute for chaotic evil is one of thanks. It is a powerful narrative because I am the one in control of it. Though I am the product of suffering, and evil, though I have fallen short of any ideal, both through my own choices and the actions of others, I am thankful, and I have the choice to be thankful. I am thankful because all these variables have contributed to my life, and to my current moment. These inputs have given emergent rise to non-linear potential. Potential that every human life shares in its basic substance, even the homeless alcoholics. Even you.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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