Can we handle the truth?

Perhaps the reason why so few people wish to study history nowadays is that they instinctively feel that it is impossible to know the truth. Many who do like history enjoy it more as a romance novel than as a valuable tool of understanding.

In theory I agree that history is how we should understand who we are and where we have come from. But the reality is that do we really dare understand who we are and where we have come from? This is especially true of the English-speaking migrant nations of North America and Australia whose history is so much bloodshed, thievery and oppression that a true history makes for pretty sickening reading. Better to treat the whole thing as a story book from which you can pick the bits you like.

Most people's ideas of history come at best from compilations historians, those who pick over the research of others and write it up in the most entertaining way they can. The result is often little better than The Da Vinci Code' and it is little wonder that so many people have actually started to believe there is some basis in that fiction. After all Who knows the truth? Who wants to know the truth?

Learn more about this author, Peabody Snickersbee.
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