Forget History?

What historical event fascinates you the most?

I’m sitting here with my bowl of breakfast cereal and pondering this prompt: “What historical event fascinates you the most?” I’m not sure, as I mentally fast-forward through the timeline of history, that I can pick out just one, the most fascinating, event.

Now, it’s not that I’m unfamiliar with the history of the world. I wouldn’t say that I’m a student of history per se, but I have made it a strong part of my knowledge base. This is due in part to my first year as a university transfer student; to catch up on my requirements I took Art History, Music Appreciation, Theatre History, and Western Civilization II (having taken Part I the previous summer) all at the same time. This helped make clear to me how all the areas were related—and this was something I continued in my teaching, always beginning each theatrical period with an historical overview and also referencing the Art and Music of the eras.

But to pick out one event? In a way, it’s reminds me of a statement I make in my memoir, Immaculate Misconceptions: Tales of Catholic School:

It’s fascinating to look back on one’s life. It’s like driving up a winding mountain road; you take strange and twisting turns, as you drive higher and higher. Finally, when you’re high up on the mountain, and you look back down, you see that the curving road has straightened out. All the twists and turns are gone, and you see the direct connections among the various events in your life. You see a clear link between something that happened to you in the fourth grade, or you see an event that changed your behavior then, and now that behavior governs your whole way of thinking about things.

Scanning my mental images of history like a flip-book, I can see how so many things were bound to happen in a cause-and-effect way. They make sense, in retrospect; even the most horrific events seem somehow inevitable. How then can I pick out one in particular that fascinates me when the whole of human history—and let’s be honest, the whole of the history of the universe—is pretty amazing stuff?

Maybe, if I did have to pick something, it would be that truly unknowable (in spite of the theoretical physics) moment of the start (I am avoiding the term “creation” for obvious reasons) of the Universe. How did it happen that all of This came about? Maybe that’s why I like watching fireworks explode overhead; I feel like I’m in the middle of the Big Bang.

To return to the idea of history: we often hear the old adage, credited to the philosopher George Santayana, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” My worry is not so much that we are condemned to repeat forgotten mistakes as much as the current Orwellian movement to change and rewrite the historical records. How do we recall the lessons of the past when they have been erased or perverted?

Let’s preserve the knowledge of history as accurately as we can (because, as we also know, history is written by the victors), so we can continue to make history, rather than erase our existence and all human knowledge and endeavors in ignorance or apocalypse.