From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Sun Aug 25 2002 - 20:34:41 MDT
>
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: spike66
>>...
>>
>>Political history teaches
>>students to hate other groups because of historical
>>conflicts...
>>Forget history! Forget it! Replace it all with future
>>studies. Look forward, not back...
>>Focus instead on new advancements on the horizon. Sever the
>>bonds with the past, put all of it behind us and look to the future.
>>
Greg Burch wrote:
>Spike, I wish I was sure you were being tongue-in-cheek here, but I fear
>you're not.
>
Im not, but do not give up on me Greg. I have a new idea, perhaps
more practical than my original knee-jerk reaction.
>Yes, there are a lot of painful things in our history and, yes,
>unfortunately, most history is taught to most people in the world as a
>simple moral narrative to induce allegiance to some creed or party.
>
This is why I posted the overboard notion to start with. I am
becoming ever more convinced that we have no practical
means of learning the real truth. Even the reporting of current
events is done with a non-subtle spin, to color the event in
such a way as to promote some political agenda. The world's
news organizations have become more corrupt than the institutions
they seek to expose, far more corrupt.
Would I be out of line to name this meme SUP, spike's uncertainty
principle? In Heisenberg's version, HUP, the product of the uncertainty
of a particle's position and its momentum is a constant. In the SUP
version, all events, past and present are held to some uncertainty
in relation to how these events can be used to promote some
political notion, sell a product, advance a meme or carry out
some unknown agenda by some unknown participant.
We might reduce the uncertainty by presenting history and
current events in such a way that is ineffective in promoting
any particular political agenda. Let us report the past and
the present in colorblind, genderblind and morally neutral
terms, the way science (ideally) is done.
> But
>that doesn't mean that a more objective, balanced study of history isn't
>possible and that the truths that can be gleaned from such a study
>aren't valuable.
>
OK Gregory, pal, I trust your judgement more than I trust my
own, and so I will concede this point. Now to my idea.
In order to reduce the uncertainty necessitated by SUP,
I propose a new way of teaching history, one that would
be nearly uniform regardless of the nation in which it is
taught. This new history teaching method would
de-emphasize wars and rulers and emphasize technology
and science.
Wars are treated thus: conflicts between nations and
peoples have occurred repeatedly, they were all profoundly
destructive, meaningless for the most part, tragic as hell.
Nearly without exception, the side prevailed that was more
technically, scientifically and industrially advanced. Good
chance it will always be so.
Nowthen, the real important persons in history are those
who created scientific and technological advances, which
caused humans to move forward. Let us emphasize
Henry Ford, not Henry the 8th. Alexander Graham Bell,
not Alexander the Great. George Washington Carver,
not George Washington.
>...in this, you may be right: Having such a truncated and ill-formed
>conception of history may be worse than having no knowledge at all.
>
>Greg Burch
>
Greg it has been my experience that history is and must
be misrepresented in every classroom. If the real truth
were to be told, humanity would dispise itself, even more
than we already do (evolution have mercy).
Let us focus on the postive. Let us focus on that which
is noble, that which raises us above the wretched beasts
of the field. We have technology and science. That alone
will save us and take us to the promised future.
spike
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