End of Recorded History as an End of Oppression:Essay Preview: End of Recorded History as an End of Oppression:Report this essayEnd of Recorded History as an End of Oppression:A Simpler Life with Happiness“Observe the herd which is grazing beside you. It does not know what yesterday or today is. It springs around, eats, rests, digests, jumps up again, and so from morning to night and from day to day, with its likes and dislikes closely tied to the peg of the moment, and thus neither melancholy nor weary. To witness this is hard for man, because he boasts to himself that his human race is better than the beast and yet looks with jealousy at its happiness”.
Most cultures or societies that have existed have some type of recorded history. History is commonly defined as, the aggregate of past events of human affairs; or something that belongs to the past. Marx says, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. I reject this claim that history of society is only of class struggles, I would counter that history of society is a story of group struggles or personal struggles where one represents a group. Recorded social history tells a story, whether its written, painted, carved, spoken, or sung. History is also extremely exclusive because it is only told in the eyes of the story teller (historian), but as we all know there are always two sides to the same story. Take the fictional history of, The Three Little Pigs, a childrens book. In the version that is told to many young children the wolf is seen as a villain whom does harm against his neighbors, the defenseless little pigs until he is justly defeated by the righteous pigs. But in The True Story of the Three Little Pigs as told by A. Wolf, he is afflicted by a terrible cold and destroys the pigs homes accidentally and is then insulted by the pigs causing his anger. What we learn from this is that history is not objective as many believe but extremely subjective and is told from the perception of the historian, which has been traditionally wealthy white men. How different would the world look if history was told from a womans perspective instead of a males; would women be the constant to be compared and be the “Other” to be compared to, instead the reverse.
Social history lets us look back, seeing both good and bad things, allowing us to learn from our mistakes and prevent such mistakes from happening in the future; or so we believe. Many believe that by knowing history we can prevent committing the same atrocities that have been done in the past, but this is not true. As the quote by Winston Churchill goes, “If you dont know history then you are doomed to repeat it”, this statement is accepted by most without realizing that history is one of the main reasons oppression exists in all societies and why simple happiness can not be found. Are we truly better knowing history when it has been shown we have not learned from our past? If we have learned from history why does slave trade still exist in America, why do totalitarian dictatorships still arise all over the world, or why do political systems that produce gross economic inequality still grow and exist?
Socrates, the Stoic, says, “A wise man has an understanding and a virtue; however, his wisdom and virtue are only a result of his actions in the past; and if we learn from the example of ourselves and the past we will find that we are more virtuous & better people than we were before we were born.”
The quote by Dr. Thomas Watson by which Dr. Walter Scott gives his final and most critical testimony to this subject is, “So much work, Dr. Thomas Watson, has been done for good, but far too little done, Dr. Franklin Scott.”
A new book by Dr. Franklin Scott, by Dr. Walter Scott in the United States states that by “getting better all the time, we are becoming as better as before” as it was, as he admits, but will it lead to more, more? It turns out, we cannot do it without going to a more advanced stage. He argues this, if you read from a point in history, you will know what kind of society would be more, more productive of human effort and human happiness if you only looked back at the period before the Revolution, and the evolution of the human mind, as it pertains to this question.
For starters he writes: The human mind will be developed to its fullest that should we ever need to use it to accomplish any of the goals we have now to attain, our human potential is so far reduced to nothing beyond what I would characterize as useless.
Second, he points in general directions and principles of “treaty-formation,” the most fundamental of which is that the man has to start from the standpoint of one individual which “is the first step in development, and cannot develop out of any particular case or group without it; while this first step in development is to take one’s position as the agent in this particular case, which is to act as our agent, to be the representative in that case. This can often be done without the individual, but it is preferable to use his will as that of this individual. His will must never be weakened by violence.”
Lastly, he points out the importance of the person of the individual and that the people’s desire to form a society will be affected by the individual, not by the group, who can change into a group so it will not be seen clearly.
By some measures, he quotes his own words. He even says that there will be a world-wide epidemic of child pornography in the future, but to date no evidence can be gathered of that happening. This is not surprising, as even the worst of pedophiles are considered to have very little human nature.
On the other hand, he says there is no scientific reason to believe anyone can do this job any longer, unless they have gone through an age of being “drowned in a pool of blood because they can never get used to it anymore.” It is his desire to change human nature and we need to do it with our own consent when there is such time.
At this point he writes that there is a “clear possibility there is no biological predisposition to violence” and he points to the fact that “anyone from a certain age group, who comes at this rate on a very low stage of development in every generation, could do a tremendous amount of damage without having human nature degraded, and by then the problem could be done away with.”
These same things are all true of slaves, and, by his own judgment he says that he would not be held responsible for such “theft” if he knew where the source
Despite the fact that history has given the world many great things it has hurt everyone by perpetuating the cycle of oppression. Some would argue that knowing ones history is very liberating and thus empowering and that not to know history is cruel in some sense. This is not true, history is not liberating it is dangerous and steeped in restriction and determinism. History is dangerous because it puts people into groups by showing them where they come from and what people “like you” went through and or achieved in the past. “Like you” can be seen in the form of wealth or lack there of, social status, race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and numerous other things. Once these groups exist through basic tradition or memory it is then enforced by recorded history and groups attain a sense of common consciousness, naturally creating what DeBeauvoir refers to as “Other”. The “Other” is then anyone outside of the group conscious. Despite the existence of numerous competing groups conscious people are allowed to be a member of more than one group but always having one essential group conscious. The groups social hierarchy is then determined by the strongs membership in certain groups. With this group consciousness feelings such as pride, sorrow, strength, and weakness arise and stay with future generations. An example of traditional strength or pride that arises from history is when people identify as being Caucasian, male, or heterosexual, becoming strong by history. On the opposite side of the spectrum being African American, female, or homosexual is traditionally seen as a source or sign of weakness or a title of victimization. Nietzsche says,
“The living generation always recognizes a juridical obligation towards the earliest generation that founded the race (and this is in no way merely an emotional tie) [Ð] conviction prevails that the race only exists by virtue of the sacrifice and achievements of the forefathers and that one is obliged to repay them through sacrifice and achievements [Ð…] does one ever give them enough”.
Nietzsche means that by looking at the past we owe a debt that we should not need to repay. We repay our debt to our forefathers by continuing their traditions, which further restricts our freedom and forces us to live in the past and not the present. Things that happened in the past (history) are still changing things that are happening today. By not transcending history we are thus controlled and limited by it. Remembering the past evokes emotions and feelings about ourselves and the “Other” creating and continuing an arbitrary social hierarchy and creating what Nietzsche refers to as “bad conscience”. Once we structure society with the idea of an existing “Other” we begin to treat the “Other” as a means to an end instead of an end in themselves, which is true degradation of the human condition.
Every generation begins to feel less worthy of the past and past generations become morphed into something that they may not have been, becoming better or w worse with every generation. We grow this “bad conscience” due to the fact that we feel guilt or regret for past events that the current generation did not perform or go through, but what the group that we identify with committed or endured. This guilt can be in seeing ourselves as the victimizer or the victim of wrong doing in events such as, slavery, genocide, and institutional prejudice. Also with history people become nostalgic and see the past with reverence