COM 325 / Week Four Discussion: How is history "a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn"?
"The past causes the present" and "history illumines reality." Therefore, the narrative of a people's history has never been neat and easy. Our common memory and tacit agreement about what happened in the past has been a major battlefield among different political ideologies. How we tell the history of our nation can significantly influence our expectations for future generations. Consider how the following two US history books were reviewed by Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/). How can history be viewed as "a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn"? Explain.
(1) Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present"
Review on Goodread
(2) Larry Schweikart and Michael Patrick Allen: A
Patriot’s History of the United States: From Columbus’s Great Discovery to the
War on Terror.
Review on Goodread:
This is an interesting statement, but when broken down it is a powerful statement about how history guides us and moves us towards the future. A pact is an agreement, so how can these stages of life agree? I believe that working backwards is the best way to understand this agreement. The unborn gives people the motivation to not repeat the mistakes of the past, to strive to make things better, and the promise that things will be better, to actively create history, not be passive in its creation. The living manipulates events. They make the choice of what gets passed along, what gets remembered, how it is remembered (favorable or unfavorable). The dead provide lessons learned (good and bad), a one sided view (losers tell no tales), but the main lesson the dead provide is that they cannot hold the present or the future accountable to the “truth”. These multiple parts come together to continuously create history, whether it is good or bad, right or wrong, will be for the next generation to judge.
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