Did Churchill really Exist? Do you wonder why history repeats itself?
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I just read the new story quoted below on yahoo today:
Quarter of Brits think Churchill was myth
Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.
The survey found that 47 percent thought the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth. And 23 percent thought World War II prime minister Churchill was made up. The same percentage thought Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale did not actually exist. Three percent thought Charles Dickens, one of Britain’s most famous writers, is a work of fiction himself. Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi and Battle of Waterloo victor the Duke of Wellington also appeared in the top 10 of people thought to be myths.” — UKTV Gold television surveyed 3,000 people.
And to think that people wonder why history more often than not, and often sadly really, repeats itself. Do you ever wonder why history repeats itself?
That poll in Britain is troubling evidence that education systems are failing everywhere. And here we are living in this age of mass communication and it seems that we have not gotten any better at connecting major past events and people to the relevance and meaning they need to have to our here and now.
If we fail to realize, know, and understand the meaning of past historic events and people in our lives today, both events and people whose impact was positive or negative, we will be doomed to repeat or experience the repeat of events that most would agree we as a world need to learn from so we can be spared that kind of suffering all over again. Suffering that so many societies and people have endured in many different eras of the history of the world.
It seems to me that ever since the cultural revolution of the “me-generation” in the late 1960′s and the early 1970′s the main by-product of that revolution that has endured is a powerful and not helpful cultural narcissism. A cultural narcissism that has meant subsequent generations taking narrow views of the world around them and of their own lives in ways that separate us not only from the past but from each other.
In this day and age of a global society made much more real by the information highway of the internet that connects all countries in the world to a rich and seemingly endless flow of information about anything and everything how can it be that people lack so much knowledge?
What is being valued more than knowledge? Sadly it would seem that as an off-shoot of this cultural narcissism – a cultural narcissism that the last 3 generations have been raised in and isolated by, our world today has developed an information over-load that despite its potential to enrich knowledge as actually left a black suck-hole, a void, where knowledge should be increasing that instead sees an onslaught of cultural attention-deficit-disorder-type mentality in which the sound byte rules.
The trouble isn’t only that the sound-byte rules. The trouble is multiplied many times over by the reality that few are listening to begin with and fewer still are seeking.
What we resist will persist. What we do not acknowledge can’t be changed. What we fail to be educated about and by causes us, as a world, as a species, to make atrocious mistakes that severely damage the potential that humanity has for so much more.
Do you wonder why history continues to repeat itself when really it is within our power to learn and remember the lessons of those who came before us. Lessons and knowledge that too many do not value enough or care enough about to make the connections that could change the current course of humanity.
Why are more people interested in the latest celebrity gossip or the personal drama of those who are famous than they are interested in the substantial and very real issues, concerns, and problems of our times? Is this culture of distraction merely the marketing bonanza of media and its advertisers? Is it merely escapism? Or is it something much more sinister? Who is it that benefits most when the people of a country, or the world for that matter, remain oblivious to the lessons of history by being all consumed by the nonsense of cultural narcissism and celebrity obsession?
We live in a hectic and more troubled world than ever before. We have the technology and “know-how” to destroy the very world that we live in and that sustains our lives. Ignorance is not bliss.
As the robot in the 1960′s television series, “Lost in Space” often decreed to young space traveller William Robinson – “Danger Will Robinson, Danger … Danger … Danger…”
Are we as a species doomed to be lost in space? Are we lost in and to the space in the gaps in our awareness and appreciation of history that seems to remain so barren despite information being almost everywhere and right at our fingertips, literally only seconds away?
I think we are. The question is, why? Why are we lost in space? Why are so many okay with putting their heads in the sand when the survival of our world is in danger in so very many ways?
© A.J. Mahari
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