{ 09 juillet 2005 }
lies my teacher told me and the civilization of man
i just started reading lies my teacher told me by james w. loewen. he makes a lot of good points about how certain people are turned into heroes by history textbooks. did you know that helen keller was a socialist? and that woodrow wilson opposed women’s suffrage and was a racist? i’m sure that you didn’t know any of that; i certainly didn’t before starting this book. apparently textbook writers want students to think everything the usa has ever done was good and just, but that isn’t the case. students really should be taught history by learning about the good, the bad and the ugly, whether or not it looks poorly on the usa. otherwise the students aren’t really learning history; they’re learning a soft and cuddly version of what happened in the past. i’m only a fifth of the way through the book, but i recommend it.
reading this book has made me think about how far mankind has come in the past millennia. people used to kill and plunder in order to get what they wanted. more often than not, the greediest, most power-hungry individuals were the 1s in control, and the leaders didn’t think anything of taking over another group’s land by sheer brute force. if an individual didn’t want to do what the leader wanted him to, then he’d most likely be tortured and/or killed. of course i’m no history buff, but this sure seems like the trend across time.
but what caused people to become more tolerant and civilized over time? when did people all of a sudden start thinking, “hey, it’s okay if you want to practise a different religion than me” or “let’s settle this matter with a trial rather than just cutting your hand off based on accusations”? granted, there are still plenty of people out there who are super power-hungry and greedy, plus people who only use violence to try to make a point [as the recent bombings in london show]. there are even still people like saddam hussein who had his sons-in-law killed because their opinions differed from his.
however, what about other countries, like the usa, england, sweden? i know no country is as tolerant as we could hope it to be, but compared to how things used to be, many governments and leaders seem extremely tolerant and civilized. people are now taken to trial and if found guilty, given a punishment that matches the crime rather than being unfairly killed for a minor offense. citizens are allowed to disagree with their government and even peacefully protest, write letters, petition, whatever to try and make changes. in most parts of the world, people are no longer forced off their land or forced into slave labour.
but what has brought about all these changes? certainly not religion because that has caused as many problems & wars as greed and miscommunication. are people now channeling their desire for power into climbing the corporate ladder? are they fulfilling their greed by gathering material possessions, now quite available to the masses, thanks to the industrial revolution? or are people just becoming [ha!] nicer and less greedy? what caused people to start becoming more tolerant, despite hundreds of years of wars and struggles partially due to intolerance?
posted at 00.17