Thursday, March 8, 2012

How our Understanding of History is Manipulated

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that in order for us, the general
population, to understand the deeper issues of the current geopolitical situation, it is imperative for us to understand the relevant history.

This may sound somewhat obvious, but I would argue that this is a fundamental sticking-point when discussing such matters, as it is difficult to link individuals to the antisocial and unethical actions they perpetrate [1:2] without a historically accurate point of reference.

For example, when discussing matters such as the proposal that 9/11 may have been initiated by our ‘leaders’ [3], I find that people quite often respond with the simple question 'why?', as it seems absurd to think that our 'leaders' would do something quite so inhuman and immoral for some sort of political gain. I will not attempt here to go into what their motives were, but rather into why it is that we, the general public, rarely remember the lessons of the past and continue to be misled about the circumstances leading to each and every conflict.

At this juncture I would suggest that the reader check out an article by John Pilger entitled 'Our children are learning lies' in which he clearly sets out several examples of how we are taught about an historic event at school and how this information will in turn have a direct effect on the formation of our future perceptions of the world [4]

Unfortunately, this information can all too often bear little or no relation to the actual event (Pilger uses Vietnam as a prime illustration of this), because the language and information used to teach us essentially pre-programs our comprehension of future warfare, automatically predisposing us to whichever side has been identified as the 'goodies' while creating a vested dislike or even hatred of the 'baddies'.