by Queen Octavia » Tue Apr 24, 2007 7:09 am
Okay, if you didn't like my take on gender intelligence (in)equality, I'll take a stab at that "History is written by the victors" axiom, in serious fashion.
This one gets people all riled up because its subject of discourse is "the truth". People seem to think that what is "true" and what is not "true" matters a great deal in their lives. People like to think that our knowledge can extend back many generations, to the Napoleonic wars, the dark ages, the birth of Christianity and even earlier than that. People like to think that the past matters. They think this because if the past did not matter, then how could the future?
They think all this, but quite frankly it is not true. Sure, in the short term we remember that those Germans got the snot kicked out of them. That the Russians were too busy mass producing funny hats to win the cold war. We remember the perspective of the winner, for this small bit of time. We remember, because if we claimed otherwise these winners are still in power and would proceed to kicking the snot out of us.
However, when fortune fails the victors what then? What do we truly remember of the Napoleonic wars? I personally seem to recall some short guy who had millions trembling at his name. Would this have been Napoleon's perspective? I doubt it.
History is not written by those brute tyrants who command their troops to conquest. No, it is written by the artists of the age. The painters, the sculptists, the philosophers and their ilk. These people record it, the masses interpret what they see. Most things are lost. Some epic memories remain. The truly great stories of comedy, tragedy or whatever else entertained the people.
These are what we preserve as history. Written not by the victors, but by the artists. Thankfully, artists submit to the yoke less often than the common man. They are the fools who value their opinion more than their well being.
The victor's artists may paint a tale of unfounded invasion, the loser's may scuplt a fresco depicting the tragic massacres. Then as the years roll by and time grinds so many generations into dust, mankind will always remember what truly moved our hearts.
[Recommended reading - "Deadhouse Gates", book two of The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. The whole series is excellent and one of the main characters in this book is a historian in the middle of a war. Book one not required, but highly recommended as it is excellent in its own right. Ditto books 3,4,5 & the ones I haven't read yet.]
...And as for cooties, boys are immune to them - duh!