the past

[Guest arabaliozian]

ON HISTORIANS*************************The past is one but there are as many versions of it as there are historians. If a historian were to adopt another historian’s version he would condemn himself to redundance.*A nationalist historian is one who believes his version of the past should serve the interests of the nation. Which means there will be as many versions of the past as there are conflicting interests. Which also means every religion, ideology, system of thought, tribe, political party and regime will be fully justified in fabricating its own set of myths, half-truths, propaganda and lies. It follows a historian will no longer be a historian but a civil servant working for the ministry of propaganda.*No one will ever know all the facts and the facts behind the facts, no one except God, and so far He has refused to share his version of the past with us; but in his infinite wisdom He has done the next best thing: He has instilled in man a love of truth and the ability to reach it by means of objective judgment.*To identify truth with self-interest is also to legitimize the Turkish version of history.*Netanyahu: "They call me a war criminal and they support Bin Laddin, Saddam Hussein, and Arafat."MORE ON HISTORIANS ****************************Great historians are also philosophers of history and like all authentic thinkers they are dissidents: Edward Gibbon (DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE) was critical of Christianity. Oswald Spengler (DECLINE OF THE WEST) was critical of the West, including the Roman Empire, and Arnold Toynbee (STUDY OF HISTORY) was critical of nationalism.  If it were up to nationalist historians, these three historians would be called traitors.*Every regime produces its brand of historians but who remembers them after the regime collapses?  Who was Mussolini’s or Hitler’s or Stalin’s favorite historian? Does anyone care?*We are good at exposing and analyzing the lies and blunders of odars, but when it comes to our own, we prefer to lament. We confuse the study of history with counting victims and documenting atrocities. Our nationalist historians appear never to have heard Krikor Zohrab’s dictum: "The worst blunder we can commit is dealing with our blunders with lamentation."*Think of the stars in the sky and the chaotic impression they must have made on primitive men and on any man today who is not an astronomer; and think of all the great philosophers, mathematicians, and physicists who, after millennia of speculation and theorizing, created the discipline of astronomy, so that to the average astronomer today the night sky is no longer an enigma but a mathematical structure with predictable laws, patterns, regularities, orbits, and distances.Now think of our past and our understanding of it: though many of our own great thinkers and historians have also seen patterns, laws, and regularities, we continue to subscribe to the flat-earth theory by ascribing all our defeats and tragedies on others, thus implying that our only salvation is in enlightening and educating the world, never ourselves.*The USSR collapsed not because of the evil influence of dissidents like Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov (as Stalinists like to assert) but because the policies adopted and implemented by the Kremlin were wrong.History does not take orders from dissidents.Dissidents don’t shape history. They have no power over the destiny of a nation: all they do is interpret its direction.Our medieval historians predicted our downfall long before it happened. Again and again they warned our kings and warlords that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. But they were ignored. They continue to be ignored today.As for our tribal leaders: repeated failure does not seem to faze them; it is as though they had raised an invisible Chinese Wall between themselves and reality. They recycle the same old propaganda line and they can always count on a tiny band of brainwashed faithful followers whose critical faculties have been atrophied. As for the alienated majority: they no longer matter because they are part of that reality that is on the other side of the invisible Chinese Wall.