HISTORY versus TRUTH

The time frame of history begins with pictures on the walls of caves and ends at today's newspaper and website writings and pictures. Oral history, however close to the truth of the past it may be, relies on the vagaries of memories and limited presentations to small audiences.

The need for written records matched the growth of settled populations and competition fostered by accumulation of wealth. Mercantilism and religion joined forces to increase their control over populations and wealth. Somehow, the history of financial dealings and transactions, and the word of God, became entwined. The leaders of both these forces relied on the past for their present power; the one for stories of success and the other for stories of communication with God.

Quite obviously, conflicting needs led to conflicting accounts of past events and transactions. The very definition of truth became fungible. The statements of high priests were the ineffable truth. The wealthy and powerful, by force of position created the truth. Thus, the history of events and transactions became subject to the needs and desires of the victors of wars or the people who paid the writers to create the history of events. Kings, Pharaohs, High Priests, Emperors, and their minions, dictated history and history thus became what was written.

If we call what was, the truth, and we call what was written, history, it becomes readily apparent that the two may not be identical. This can be demonstrated by two versions of the same event as depicted by winners and losers of wars.

As a starting point, Israel's "War of Independence" became Palestinian Arabs' "Naquba" or "Tragedy." Israel describes the exodus of the Palestinians as responsive to the demands of the invading Arab armies to clear the way for them to throw the Jews into the sea. The Palestinians assert that the Jews attacked the civilian population mercilessly, forcing them to flee into exile and leave their homes and homeland for the refugee camps in neighboring Arab countries. Both histories have become immutable truths. Both truths are immutable history to their believers.

More familiar but with fewer details, which is the "true history," the two-faced history of America's westward movement from the initial landings of Europeans on the east coast through the declarations of statehood of the western territories of what is now the United States of America or the tragic history of the slaughter and theft of their lands of Native Americans in that same period?

The lesson to be learned here is that the "Truth" and "History" of the same events may be at variance and this syndrome has been repeated from the beginning of recorded events and shall always be repeated. That history repeats itself is the nature of history. A corollary is that power uses history to guide its actions in the present and thus, contrary to Santayana's warning, knowingly repeats the lessons learned from history. With this in mind, a search for the facets of events as seen by those affecting them and affected by them is mandated, keeping in mind that the powerful, usually the "winners," write the histories though the truth might lie elsewhere.