On March 19, 2018, our HIST 390 discussed the questions that surround history as a whole.  When one really thinks about it, many people get their general knowledge of history through museums and history books, and while that is all fine and good, what happened if we were to find out that museums and the authors of those said books were purposefully tampering, making up, or withholding information?  While most probably won’t mind too much (and maybe get a little bit irritated for being lied to all of this time), true history fanatics would probably be outraged!  So much time spent committing a couple of historical facts to memory and spending time and energy studying a history based on the belief of these facts being real, only to find out that it had all been a lie or hadn’t been as accurate as you thought it was!  While there is probably never going to be enough proof or enough of a conspiracy to force trustworthy investigators to find out the level of accuracy the information books and museums present as true (and in all honesty, what if those investigators were in on the lie too), the thought is indeed scary.  After all, we have no reason to accept the history museums and books want you to accept (at least, at face value).  The purpose of the brain is to think critically about what we take in and decide for ourselves whether we believe it or not.  If we do not believe it, then that then leads to whether you are passionate enough to undergo an investigation of your own or if you are simply content of staying ignorant to what the real truth is and going on with your life.  After all, no one person truly has the right to force you into thinking what they want you to think.  Then again, maybe the less than preferable practices of history books and museums aren’t coming completely from a place of malice and desire of manipulation.  There have certainly been times when museums have considered changing a display simply because sometimes they feel that if they allowed people to see the actual artifact or display in the way that it was supposed to see, then people wouldn’t believe it and would accuse the museum of promoting propaganda anyway.  It truly is a complicated issue when one takes into account the suspension of disbelief the public may have.  After all, what’s the point of being completely honest if no one is willing to believe you?

A prominent example of all of this is the fact that there were black soldiers fighting for the Confederacy back in the Civil War.  It seems contradictory, doesn’t it?  Why would black people fight for a system that was actively enslaving and mistreating them?  There are multiple accounts of Union soldiers witnessing the black and white soldiers of the Confederacy fighting alongside one another seemingly with little to no issue, but at the same time there were accounts where, yes, while they were actually fighting together, it was probably because they were forced to due to a loss of too many soldiers on the Confederacy side.  Which accounts do we believe?  On one hand, forcing black slaves and citizens to fight for them supports the belief and narrative that the Confederacy was the side of immoral racism; but on the other hand, the accounts that vouch that they were fighting as one pokes a pretty disastrous hole into all of that.  Perhaps slavery in the U.S. was not nearly as bad as people made it out to be?  Perhaps we are simply taking these documents out of context?  Perhaps these were all fabricated for a sinister purpose?  We really have no way of knowing for sure, as there is actual credibility to all of these theories!

This truly is a predicament that I feel is of the utmost importance.  So many people draw from the past to make decisions in the present and future!  There are entire groups of people who use their ancestors’ pasts to define who they are!  Policies and philosophies are created due to people looking to the past and determining which patterns and similarities would consistently come up and determining whether the country or humans as a whole should emulate and follow such examples or not!  While the past surely should not define anyone or any place’s present or the future, many aspects of society draw from the past for guidance.  If the past is indeed being mistranslated, misinterpreted, or manipulated, then wouldn’t everything in our society based on it then be a society based on lies?  What a dilemma this presents to us!