History that doesn't fit into textbooks

Last Thursday we engaged with the concept of history-as what is written down. We need to affirm first the fact that at one point certain groups of people could not write, and thus document their own histories and second, that technologies available do impact the capacities to document 'historical' events.

The making of history, I'll call it, is frequently in the hands of a select few- think the journalists following the agenda of a news agency, controlled by a major conglomerate. They want the stories that sell, the ones that get attention, that move people. Notice that news headlines frequently cite plane crashes, ships capsizing, and even minute accounts of people getting shot. The world isn't exactly this grim, and certainly someone centuries from now peeling through our old news articles would document our society as quite tragic, or at least obscurely obsessed with tragedy. What makes this 'history', is that we define our day to day world by these happening events. At the end of December, we revisit the year past based off these events- our own little historical account of the year.

This approach to historymaking is problematic as evident. First, theres large corporate entities determining what events are historic. Second and following the first point, this way of history making is grossly undemocratic and only touches the 'selling' events. We each have our own perspectives, and thus our own life histories which will rarely make major headlines. Similarly, a great portion of personal instances are discarded by our memories. To prove this, recall EVERYTHING you have done in your life. You can't, but they are still a part of your historic string of existence. It's a broad thing to tackle, but I am demonstrating how we too determine our own historical account of our own lives. So too did the historical figures in text books, but it's doubtful the account of their lives printed and that which was within their own memories were very congruent. 

Technological advancement has impacted the collective history-making of culture. I'm certain illiterate peasants in the 14th century too joked about silly animal behaviours they saw in the day, however they had no means to document this external to word-of-mouth. Our historical accounts of past civilizations are constructed on documents, existing written accounts, artifacts and the like. Less society-moving events are forever gone. So, imagine in 2112, when the content of web sites are stashed away in what's left of the HDDs from now, connected and synchronized, revealing a different account of our own lives. Not only have we a fetish for blood and horror, we as 21st century people took vigorous steps to documenting humorous animal behaviour and funny signs-so that what people with the means and autonomy to document their own daily event document, is that which is entirely different from the news accounts. Finally, I'm sickened to think what future generations will make of our own live history a la Facebook. "By God Mr. Walker, I found a photo-biography of someone on this drive! The definitive event in his life was New years 2009!"

Wrapping up, what is historical first is determined by those with the power of making such documentations, which today are often in the hands of corporate media. Everything has a history, and we as individuals make our own historical accounts of our lives (our childrens' too), discarding redundant information we may deem unimportant. With the advent of online social media, our capacity to document our lives has increased- although just as often, what is documented is more reflective of cultural trends, not which we regularly deem a historical event.

Much more must be said on this topic.

 

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