Our past is not fool proof, our present may be full of them
Words & images © Paul Ransom
You probably know the drum. Someone in your circle makes an argument from history to support their claim/cause. They speak with apparent authority and are dismissive of counter claims. As they unpack their version of events their bias screams louder. Their god, their nation, their ism. They look to you to agree, or try to corner you. History proves them right – righteous – and woe betide you for daring to disagree. I suspect we have all been both perpetrator and victim in this regard.
That we diverge on the reputed facts and lessons of yore is to be expected. Indeed, it is healthy. New information and interpretations are a key plank of historiography; so too our evolving values and shifting moral compasses. Our past is not entirely mapped and our understanding of it not fixed. Thus, the take-outs remain arguable.
Nonetheless, we court danger when we press history into the service of dogma, because when we do it is too often weaponised, too often a means of airbrushing out the grit of humanity in favour of abstracted story arcs and their frequently tragic results. History, selectively edited, lends itself to repetition. As in, another holy war, another campaign of persecution, yet more ruinous near-sighted folly.
Much as we love a good pattern we should be wary of retro-fitting the past to accord with neat theory. The unfolding flow of human civilisation did not take place in a book, nor follow a precise trajectory – ascendant, declinist, or circular. Yes, there are repeated themes, but even these occur in a messier fashion than shortcut ideology would have us believe.
Therefore, whilst we look to history for valuable lessons, we are also in the habit of conscripting it as a validation for our worst excesses. To this day we employ it as an excuse to demarcate and demonise enemies, to steal their land, expropriate their resources, and worse. You might say we have a history of using history to legitimise the cruelty we visit upon others.
I won’t bore you with a long list of examples, (no doubt you can draw up your own), but suffice it to say there is probably no group – race, nation or religion – that has not used the past as its excuse to predate upon others or to later minimise the harm their actions caused. If you think your tribe is innocent, you are almost certainly mistaken. On the flipside, your homeland and your people were likely once the targets of invasion and/or persecution. Factor in civil wars and sundry scare campaigns and the chances of your ‘side’ having been both hunter and prey increase. We humans share a long back catalogue of such.
This is the legacy we have all been bequeathed; and beyond dry academia and partisan point scoring lurks the deeper lesson our ancestors so obviously failed to teach us. Remove ethnic, political and religious filters and what we observe is that the entirety of human history – remembered and forgotten – was enacted by people like you and me. Every discovery, invention, cave painting, gas chamber, gulag, sweat shop, wrong turn, etcetera. All of it. Stuff we did. A messy, complex, cross-pollinated sprawl, quite at odds with the heavily redacted versions conjured by demagogues and jihadis to bolster their exceptionalist fantasies and justify their multiple cruelties.
Apologies if this seems banal or pious, or yet another misappropriation of history. However, I was not moved to write this because I thought I could nudge the needle. I harbour no such missionary delusion.
Rather, this piece was prompted by a rant I recently endured. Unbidden, the person in question launched into a lengthy and strident sermon about the history-sanctioned Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Predictably, they insisted Ukraine was the rightful western frontier of Russia, and had always been so. (A brazenly amnesiac claim, as the area we currently call Ukraine has been absorbed into or deeply impacted by a number of empires, from Polish to Mongol to Ottoman and, yes, Russian.) Then there was the de-nazification argument. (True, in a population north of forty million there will be nazis; although I imagine there are also a number of Russian adherents.) As if these objections were not enough, my Putin-promoting pal fell back on etymology. Ukraine, they declared, meant ‘border country’. Whose border? Holy Rus’ border, of course.
That even this etymological reading remains disputable is, for me, a side issue. Though the origin of terms is a fascinating topic, one worthy of study, it is surely not enough to green light a ‘special military operation’. If I’m a citizen of Kyiv I’m thinking: wait, you sent in the tanks and murdered thousands of people because of…a word?
Simplifications aside, the salient point is this: if the present population of Ukraine do not wish to be tethered to your sphere of influence or return to the bosom of your empire, arguments from history become academic at best, if not irrelevant. The same would apply to the inhabitants of Taiwan should they not care to become a province of China, or to the people of Britain if they voted not to be ruled from Rome, (even if their island was once called Brittania by their erstwhile Latin overlords).
This is what I mean by ‘airbrushing out’ humanity. History, abstracted, compacted into ideological form, rides roughshod over us. Dehumanises us. Forgets about us. Individuals and entire communities, along with their lived experience and perspectives, are conveniently downplayed or excised from the colonial rebrand of yesteryear. The Orwellian vision of a plastic past moulded to suit is, sadly, very much in play. People will be killed in the name of the re-edit as you read. Others will be raped, enslaved, and marginalised, while some will strut around ignoring that other great lesson of the ages. Empires fall. Vassals rise up. Become the new bully, Coin another term for the same old shit.
Asserting historically-endowed ‘rights’ is a fool’s game. Millennia of migration, trade, inter-mingling and conflict has reshaped maps, cultures and gene pools. Our story is not linear, not a good versus bad drama. Our forebears wove a complex web of cause and effect, one that defies ownership of the moral high ground and refutes the claims of chosen people and uber mensch. Moreover, present inhabitants – actual living human beings – may take issue with the enforced return of ancient arrangements.
- I may live in the house you were evicted from centuries ago, but prior occupation does not mean I should roll out the welcome mat as you forcibly try to move back in
- You may have invented the gun, but that does not give you permission to point it at my head in perpetuity
- Just because your book is old does not mean its word should still be my law.
The weight of the dead should not be used to flatten the living. History is better as a guide, sometimes a warning, than an excuse. It may impart lessons, yet it is not the final word. Neither does it imply privileged access.
History is an invaluable cultural tool, but we still wield it dangerously; to kid ourselves and fool others, and to permit and sanitise our cruelty and greed. To my Russia-ranting friend, I say only this: the past is an unfinished manuscript, and the next redraft could cast you & yours as villain/victim/vanquished. What would history show you then?
Though advisable not to dismiss the lessons of the past, it is equally important to pay close attention to the teacher, if only because the scope of human history creates so much opportunity for so many motives.
It is one thing to stand on the shoulders of giants, another to be squashed beneath their boots.
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