‽istis
reclaims 100 years and a sense of
‘history’ (weekending May 2nd 2020)
As Captain Tom Moore (Honorary Colonel) celebrates his 100th birthday, ‽istis wonders about ‘history’ and memory - in a week:
‽
when reports are
broadcast[i] of
the death of another centenarian whose twin brother died 100 years’ ago from
the ‘Spanish flu’ (with that pandemic infecting an estimated 500m people
worldwide – a third of the world’s population - and killing an estimated 20m to
50m people)[ii]
‽
when US deaths
from COVID-19 surpass, in just a matter of weeks, the number of losses in 11
years of the Vietnam War (with this week also seeing the anniversary of North
Vietnamese troops entering the Independence Palace of South Vietnam in Saigon,
a symbol of the end of that conflict)
‽
of the
anniversary of[iii]:
o
George
Washington’s inauguration (1789, probably attended by enormous crowds…)
o
Hitler’s suicide
(1945)
o
British Captain
James Cook landing at Botany Bay in Australia (1770)
o
the World's worst
nuclear disaster: 4th reactor at Chernobyl nuclear power station in USSR
exploding and radioactive contamination reaching much of Western Europe (1986)
o
Bell labs announcing the 1st Solar
Battery made from silicon (1954) and the Hubble space telescope being placed
into orbit (1990)
o
1st
commercial flight across Pacific operated by Pan Am (1937)
o
Sierra Leone gaining
independence from Britain after 150 years (1961)
‽
…and on and on…
Just think of all the changes that Captain Tom has seen in a century of apparent extraordinary development and progress / regress / transgress / digress / congress (delete as appropriate)…
What events, experienced or learned about - personal, familial, small or large group social, national or global - stand out for you? And, perhaps more importantly, why? What is the link, the chime, the resonance, the role each memory perhaps plays in building and sustaining the stories I, or you, or we tell ourselves individually and collectively?
And what meaning might all those events and stories take on if memory is thought of as a reconstruction of the past in order to serve the interests of the present?[iv]
What a difference it might make if a little less of the victors’ view dominated and if the word we used for the past was ‘herstory’, or ‘theirstory’, or ‘ourstory’?
And ‽istis wonders how we might manage our particular and different reference points, narratives and meta-narratives (perhaps especially those that can fuel division and conflict)?
Just possibly a start might be to consider that ‘facts’ can perhaps be contested and that the most significant part of the word ‘history’ may be ‘story’…
And if we were to work to find common ground, to identify the shared interests of the present and then let the past be (re)constructed to serve all our interests, then imagine how different 'history' and the world could be?
© Pistis
[iii]
Take your pick from easily accessible ‘this day in history’ websites…
[iv] (apologies, source of this idea, sadly
forgotten!)
