Lounging atop his mushroom throne, the hookah-puffing
caterpillar asked, “Who are you?” Alice began her timid response with, “I- I
hardly know sir…”
Alice’s
crisis of identity as she tried to navigate the phantasmagorical Wonderland is
similar to what awaits those of us who forget where we’ve come from. That is,
those of us who don’t know our history.
The
significance of the need for and search of identity in the human experience
cannot be downplayed. Whether we acknowledge it consciously or not, we all
understand that it is a necessary aspect of our lives. I was once told that you
can’t know who you are if you don’t know where you came from, and this
emphasizes the point. On the scale of the individual to the
national, we must interrogate our past to know who and where we came from.
The
engineers of culture and civilization never take this for granted because a
shared identity is a prerequisite for a nation’s existence.
As a
sinister example of how well this is understood, the world’s ethnic cleansers who
want to rid their territory of a group of people demonstrate their
understanding of the necessity of history to identity. The destruction of a people,
or the attempt of it, often begins without taking lives. This is done by
destroying their history, taking away their language, erasing the sources of
their identity. Turkey attempted this by outlawing the language of its
subjugated Kurdish minority, as well as any recognition of their existence or
anything distinctly Kurdish, such as their folk songs (considered to be Kurdish
propaganda). The government even went as far as to label them “mountain Turks”
and deny the existence of any ethnic minorities in Turkey.
On a
more benign level, the source of common identity in history is why the subject
is taught in public schools, and taught in a certain way. Though many pause at
the idea of the government commissioning a certain curricula for the purpose of
molding a collective perception and self-image, this should only be worrisome
if history is taught dishonestly and to achieve immoral ends.
Any country you choose to inspect
will have some history of egregious violations of human rights. For this reason
there are always those who see a need to downplay the shameful parts of their
country’s past. The fear is that to do otherwise might breed generations of
unpatriotic citizens no longer held together by any common love of country.
Such a fear seems to have played a role in the decision by Oklahoma Republicans
in 2015 to cut funding for Advanced Placement U.S. History courses because,
they said, it emphasized the negative aspects of America and didn’t teach
American exceptionalism.
In
America at least, the better parts of our history are emphasized and often mythologized,
and not until reaching high school do we begin learning the sordid and often
bloody details of the country’s past. This shouldn’t receive pushback though.
History is the study of people and how they respond to change, and our great
capacity for both good and evil is borne out in those responses. The past is violent,
beautiful, intriguing, oppressive and hopeful all at the same time.
Moreover, without understanding the
real history of one’s own nation, they can’t know what threads are woven
together that have rendered the fabric of society as it currently exists.
Further, without giving some emphasis to the manifestations of the worst parts
of our nature, we will be helpless to miss the warning signs of their
reemergence and repetition both domestically and abroad. But, treading the line
between caution and “the sky is falling” hysteria, we need to be scrupulous
before asserting just how closely some present-day issue contains analogous
warnings from the past.
Never coming around exactly the same way twice,
the worst atrocities do still recur with similar themes. Often attributed to
Mark Twain, the old saying tells us that “history never repeats itself, but it
does rhyme.” This ought to inspire a greater attention for detail and
demonstrate the imperative of education. Civilization as we know it is on the
line, and the citizens of the world are responsible for its maintenance.
A tangential benefit of this is
necessary self-reflection. Easy though it is to pass judgement on others, to
critique yourself and your country is difficult, and for some impossible, until
you’re placed in front of a mirror and forced to gaze at the reflection staring
back at you. This is precisely what must happen and is often best done through
literature, which is one of the most indispensable vessels for teaching history
and conveying ideas. To this end, I can’t help thinking of books by great
authors like Arundhati Roy and Toni Morrison, among an extensive but hardly
exhaustive list of others.
To understand anything, from the
Israeli-Palestinian crisis to the inability of Marxism to ever gain a strong
foothold in the U.S., we look to history and the deeper we dig, the more we
realize just how complex an explanation is often needed. This is another advantage
of studying history; you gain an appreciation for complexity, a patience to
understand that complexity as thoroughly as possible, and a recognition that
there rarely are simple answers to questions of human civilization. In fact,
anyone who proffers simple answers to complex situations ought to be approached
with a healthy skepticism and may well warrant your distrust.
Learning
history is therefore multi-purposeful. The pursuit of it as a basis for
understanding how we’ve arrived at the present should instill the virtues of
patience, skepticism and complex analysis. Without it, we lack identity. With
it, we also hold the tools to learn from the errors and successes of our
forebears as we move forward toward a more perfect future.
