Against History; Or Why We Should Forget

By Sydney Wright

The detestable load of thousands of years of blood, sweat, and tears is thrust upon young students every day. (Or every other day; it depends on their schedule.) Most people have become accustomed to history and its accompanying load of woes. Others are even deluded into thinking that history is beneficial and necessary! Contrary to popular belief, the study of history is extremely detrimental to society and should be abolished as soon as possible. This essay, however, will attempt to make you conscious of how terrible the effects of history really are.

History is extremely harmful to everyone involved. History and the much lauded “culture” accompanying it cause many of society’s problems. First of all, history is extremely biased. There is no neutral ground, no “truth”. One version of history can be completely different from another, merely because of who wrote it. For example, can you imagine how history might be different for you if you had happened to be born and raised in the Soviet Union? You certainly wouldn’t be reading patriotic stories of imperialistic American conquest! It all depends on what side of the fence you’re on. History is extremely influential, and can be used to stifle or indoctrinate malleable minds. This is how many of the ever-present conflicts of our day are perpetuated. Nobody is born with deep-seated hatred. It is pounded into their skulls from an early age by their parents, who had the same thing done to them. The cycle continues, and is propagated by the study of history. Take the Catholics and Protestants of Northern Ireland for an example. Their squabbles all date back to battles during the Middle Ages over religious power. Catholic and Protestant people have no reason to hate each other except for their history of brutality against each other. At first the conflict was perpetuated by “noble” knights on brutal medieval battlefields. Now we have supposedly “learned from history” and have changed. The modern day knights are youth gangs who have been brainwashed since babyhood and show their patriotic spirit by throwing napalm bombs into children’s bedrooms. Innocent children die horrible deaths, and those that survive are being dragged into this mess, all because of history. Isn’t something wrong when an ancestor’s act hundreds of years ago can destroy someone’s life today? Yet this sort of racial and historical hatred is seen in various forms throughout the world: In the deep South of America, in the middle east between Arabs and Jews, even between the Muslims and Hindus of the Indian Subcontinent. The raging flames of hatred have a direct fuel line from history’s dusty tomes.

All the people with a vested interest in history are not going to let anything happen to their livelihood. This includes history teachers, students with masochistic tendencies, archeologists, textbook authors, even some librarians. They always retort, in their sniveling voices, “Well, we learn from all of mankind’s errors, and that makes the study of history worthwhile. We won’t repeat their mistakes.” At this they inwardly chuckle, because they think they’re taking the highway to heaven, without the slightest trace of a problem along the way. If we learn from our mistakes, we just learn how to repeat them MORE INTELLIGENTLY. Take war for an example. Any history textbook is packed with accounts of gory, destructive wars. SO, since we have so many examples, we should be the most peace-loving race in the universe! Unfortunately, all we have learned from our history is how to kill people more efficiently. In the old days, you had to whack every individual “bad guy” over the head with a big stick. Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed all that. Now, someone presses a button and most of the world’s population is reduced to ashes. Whoever is left had better put on their coat because it’s going to get very cold. And some people think that wasting time studying history is going to help prevent catastrophes. Famines, natural disasters, wars, etc. have all been around since the beginning of human life. Why the only thing older than war is......well.....never mind.

By now history must seem like the root of all evil, but there are still the last few nails to pound into the coffin. “In the name of science” the trend seems to be to dig up corpses, and pick apart both their skeletal remains and what we know of their lives. Those who happened to live in a time closer to ours are even less protected from getting their lives dissected. What gives us the moral right to pick apart someone else’s life? It seems almost like “playing God”. How would we feel if we knew that in the distant future some anthropologist would dig us up and giggle at how small our brain was? Then they might sit and wonder about our absurd family situation or burial arrangement. Why should we disturb the dead’s rest when it doesn’t even help us? In addition to being extremely harmful, history is a complete waste of time. Our knowledge is so fragile. Large chunks of it could be easily wiped out, through any sort of disaster. When the Library of Alexandria was destroyed by invaders, much of ancient literature was lost. Now it may seem that knowledge is not as concentrated or rare, but as the knowledge increases so does the potential to destroy it. If all the time spent poring over the past was spent improving our future, what could the human race not do? The past is dead and gone. Nothing we do can ever change it. Let humanity instead pursue a glorious future with all its might.

Yes, I know that it is highly ironic that I use historical accounts to prove the evils of history, but that’s not the point. In order to destroy an evil one must intimately know that evil. The point of this essay is that we as a society must willfully forget. This is a difficult task, facing many staunchly entrenched opponents, and will take time. Few methods are too extreme in the struggle. Take action! Organize history class boycotts, or even walkouts to prevent new victims from being absorbed into History’s gaping maw! Burn all the history books you can find! Never try to remember anything that happened more than two weeks ago! For the good of all humanity, do all that you can to eliminate the study of history.

Let me know what you think! mailto:sydneywright@bigfoot.com