A journey into history

I know what you're thinking upon clicking on this article (Well, no I don't, I'm not a psychic, but I sure can guess). You click on yet another article about the dreadful history (I speak for the majority), expecting nothing more and nothing less than drooling lessons about how our ancestors fought epic battles with strokes of brilliance and the support of the people behind their backs, how our countries constantly fell into the enemy's hands (The Chinese, duh) but they still snatched it back from the grip of death....in short, patriotism - you are required to love and sacrifice your life, for the dear country, and unconditionally. And if you're anything like me, then you are probably reading this instead of studying/ attending online classes, just as I'm writing this instead of focusing on mine.

Well, my mission is to bend your mind and convince you that history can be fun and meaningful. And yes, while I am as sleepy as any other when confronted with a double dose of history lesson every week, my love for twisted stories, triple-layered tragedies and calculated decisions that still resulted in utter destruction had kept my love for history alive: "After all this time?" "Always". Of course, "history" is not to be confused with "history lessons". Keep that in mind.

Now, let's get down to business.

History can be defined as an extensive collection - a collection of the progress, of the actions, and mostly, of the mistakes, of humankind. Dim-witted though many of us are (no offence to their intelligence, of course, who am I to judge), we are bound to realise, at one point or another, that history, even that taught at school, is like a video that records all of the activities of Homo Sapiens. The beginning of it features our ancestors, evolving from ugly chimpanzees to no less ugly humans, living in packs, sleeping in caves, picking wild fruits to eat, hunting other wild animals, and of course, most of the time staying naked.

Fast forward a couple of hundred thousand years, and voila! the wild monkeys had become hard-working farmers, living in close-knitted communities, working day and night in hope of escaping hunger (By the way, the efforts were mostly in vain, because on top of having a much less extensive diet than their predecessors - bread and beer aren't the same as 200 types of wild fruits and meat, after all, they also frequently experienced back pain from abnormal standing time in the fields, and every once in a while, a deadly disease, prospering from their close living spaces and poor hygiene and killed half of the community).

Getting closer now. Presenting...the 20th century - what a time to be alive! Revolutionary inventions that filled the riches to the brim with unimaginable luxuries, slums with houses barely 5 feet high for the workers - that is, the majority of the population, and of course, disastrous catastrophes one after another that almost, literally, blew off the Earth: a prince that decided driving around in a convertible while someone close by was carrying a gun was simply a delightful idea, a nice shy guy with a moustache who admired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution but was a tiny bit off when it comes to who exactly the theory applied to, and of course, nuclear weapons between the Soviet Union and the USA, because...communism.

And now, we are back at the present, in the year 2022. Fine journey?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the foremost reason why one must understand history. Upon inspecting events and mistakes that humanity, as a collective species, had made in the past, we can learn from their terrible mistakes, not to test them out for ourselves, but to prevent us from ever doing so. Furthermore, history is also a source of authority, a record of tried and tested errors - documenting the ideas that succeed alongside those that failed. Having known an idea as potentially causing nothing less than complete destruction, we won't be so keen on pressing the button one more time.

An example, then: Capitalism. Mentioned countless times in history lessons, particularly those about the 19th century, capitalism had always been depicted as the embodiment of evil, the source of all misery of the poor, the farmers and the workers, and thus must be eradicated. And perhaps that was, to some extent, quite true, considering how some rich French businessmen had bellies that extended well over their noses while Vietnamese peasants grind at the field and died at their feet - you know, the typical description of the Vietnamese in the 1930s and 40s seen far too many times in textbooks. So what came along to free everyone from such eternal misery? (Drumrolls please) Communism: Everyone is equal, no one is left behind, yay! So, did it stand the test of time, did it conquer capitalism, did it become the dominant model of government on Earth? Yeah...not really. The Soviet Union, the ultimate shield of communism, fell on the 26th of December, 1991. One of the many reasons behind its downfall was an overload of data: While capitalism let the invisible hand of the market decide the price of bread, communism insisted upon pinpointing the price of bread as fixed, and unchangeable. That led to both hunger (not enough money) and yet an abundance of bread at the same time (too much bread wasted)...and the Soviet Union collapsed. Today, the few communist countries left, having realised the Soviet Union's critical mistake just in the nick of time, despite still teaching capitalism's evil doings to generations of students, had let it control the market, and thus, let it decide the future of the economy, if not completely, then at least partially. Blindly repeating Lenin's model of economical plans means utter destruction of whole countries.

Yet another priceless lesson to be learned. Throughout history, humanity had developed a habit of twisting history (a joke), cherry-picking history in certain ways that suit their view of the world, and ignoring all the evidence to the contrary. I need scarcely say that such actions never produced good results. And this is the lesson: history, the true, pure and unbiased version of it, slaps us in the face from time to time - and that is what we desperately need. We need to realise our errors, we need to recognise the discrimination and disharmony concealed in our seemingly fact-based decisions, we need to listen to what the opposite side has to say, and carefully evaluate it, instead of just swiping it away with deliberately selected evidence presented by history. Ignorance is bad, but stubbornness coupled with determination is worse, and history, not favouring anyone, can be the hard-to-swallow pill that shatters such illusion of confidence and confront us with the cold, hard facts, thus preventing what can potentially be a disaster. In short, history back humanity into a back alley, shake its head vigorously, and shout "You nuts!". Just what we always needed.

Another example, perhaps? Well, coming into the spotlight is...once again, our dear old mortal enemy, China. While all countries tweak history a bit here and there to paint themselves in a better light, no countries had gone as far as China as to cover themselves with a shiny skin of pure fake glory: their version of history is so shockingly altered, no wonder why many consider themselves superior to other humans (of course, many doesn't mean all). Particularly, the Tiananmen Square massacre had been completely wiped off of their history books, and should any Chinese even mention the name, heavy censorship will be immediately enforced by the CCP - that desperate for a flawless image of a communist country.

Perhaps have a look at it, and you shall see how twisted people's minds had become when a couple of Chinese leaders refused to be confronted by history.

I am writing down all of this, not to make you feel inferior for your dislike of history, nor to persuade you to blindly follow my perspective and opinions about the events that had unfolded. The only purpose of this article is to show you that there are so much more of history, so many lessons to learn and bloody brilliant stories to read, so much more is waiting for you than that presented by the average history teacher - and I hope, that by knowing that history has so much more to offer than what you initially thought, you, the reader, are inspired to find out more about the history that has fascinated me for ages. Because when, one day, you become the person to go down in history, without knowledge of it, which section will you choose to go? The brilliant, or the blinded?