BellaOnline Forums Beauty and Self Life Coaching Is history relevant?

Hi Tami, you are out of this thread?

Tami, your longer post may not have answered cd's question, but i'm glad for the miscommunication, for i thought it was a very beautiful piece of writing, and i learned a lot by it. Thank you.

Welcome Holly.

Past is very relevant.

In what way do you find it relevant Manjari?

We learn from our past and the history. That tells us what to do and what to avoid. When I look back at my mistakes, I know what to do in future.

I think both personal and general history are relevant to each of us as individuals. There's the obvious thing of not wanting to repeat past mistakes, and there's the less-obvious way we can take a big-picture lesson and apply it to our own personal situations. For instance, in a work situation, you might notice someone with an "Alexander, The Great" attitude. If you are in a position not to promote that person, you may do others a favor! Another example came from a Bible study I attended. The teacher pointed out that the Wise Men avoided visiting Herod on their trip home--i.e. "They went home by another way." This just jumped out at me--sometimes it's okay to avoid evil. Sometimes, we're better off choosing to survive and deal with evil, perhaps more effectively, later on.

History is very important to us to find out where we came from, if nothing else. History tells us a lot about our past and how we came to be.

However, it is said that "History is written by the victors."

We read books and watch movies about the Old West, for instance and we hear about how the Native Americans were savage beasts and slaughtered whites and are vilified for it.

They fail to tell us that that we forcibly removed hem from their lands so we could expand westward to find gold and silver and build the railroad across the country. Buffalo Bill was hired by the railroad to hunt buffalo for food for the railroad crews and averaged over 4,000 pounds of buffalo meat a day and sold it to the railroad for 7 cents a pound.

They don't tell you about how we made treaties and then broke them. You hear about Custer being slaughtered with the 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn River but you don't hear about how he was brought back from an Army suspension by General Sheridan and General Sherman to hunt down Native Americans and kill them.

He found a village of Native Americans led by the Chief named Black Kettle and how his army surrounded the village and just started shooting at anything that moved and slaughtered everyone. They were finally chased off by Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians who came in and surrounded Custer and his men.

When Custer returned to the fort, he bragged about how he and his army killed 103 Native American Warriors when in fact, only 11 warriors were in the village. The rest were women, children and old men. Black Kettle was even killed by being shot in the back. You also didn't hear how Black Kettle had a white flag of truce on the outside of his lodge but when Custer arrived, it was too dark to see it.

You also dont hear about the slaughter of Native Americans at Wounded Knee either.

You can only take history at face value but the whole truth of history is very important but overlooked.

Do any of you ever decide you need to reinterpret past personal histories differently?

Yes> I have done that many times. But that confuses me more. This was a good question. Holly, can u given an example?