History and Poltics...
i hate them both. i always have. they're complicated and yet, often extremely boring. and oddly enough, i found myself bumbling on incessantly at my poor sister-in-law at lunch the other day on these two awful subjects.
Why is it that our generation has such a skewed view of politics? She, my sister, that is, brought up a good point. we're a generation of apathetic activists. yes. apathetic activists. on the one side, and this is horribly apparent at UNM, we're kids who run around trying to hard to shove our irrational beliefs down people's throats. we write with chalk on the concrete of campus things like "IMPEACH BUSH".... but why? because he sent some troops to Iraq because he honestly believes we have something to fight for? no, i don't know enough about the war to have a strong opinion, but i'm not going to tell the world that i hate my president. honestly, i think he's doing a better job than any apathetic activist can do.
yet, we parade this idealistic thing we call "peace". there is no such thing as "peace" in this world. a friend asked me yesterday if i had three wishes would i waste one on world peace. no. i wouldn't. its an ideal, and its a false one at that. sin is prevalent, and its staying that way until Jesus Christ comes back.
But i digress. apathetic activists.
then there's the apathetic side. the people like me who don't know and don't care. i have issues telling people i'm a republican because not only do i get funny looks for not being a democrat (God forbid) but also because i'm not sure why i call myself a republican. what does it mean? i know my dad is one. does that make me one? i want to vote, exercise one of the only rights that i am priviledged to have as an american, and yet, do i know what i'm voting for? to me, that ballot was just another standardized test where the real challenge wasn't answering the stupid question right, but filling in the bubble so the dumb computer didn't mark you wrong.
what has gotten into america? i watched a movie the other night called Idiocracy. funny stuff. it was a satire on what would the world be like if we just kept getting dumber? 500 years in the future, people are too stupid to get up off their butts and walk to the bathroom, so our arm chairs are toilets too. we started watering our plants with gatorade because someone somewhere decided that was better than water. so the guy who accidently got put in hibernation at the beginning of the movie is now the smartest person in the world when he wakes up. scary. but makes you think. what is this world coming to?
my western civ class last semester was quite possibly one of the most boring classes i had ever been in. i litereally hate history classes. i find them useless because i think what they teach me in them is uesless. do you think its going to affect my life if i know what the exact date for this or that was? these people are nothing more than characters in a boring book to me, people who existed on nothing but paper. they didn't have real lives. as far as i'm concerned, the only thing they ever did was write the constitution, or command an armada. not that those things aren't important, but i just don't care!
i told this to my uncle the other day and he made a good point. western civ classes chronicle the rise and fall of political powers in our world. or more specifically, in the western world: europe. but he took it a step further. why don't we chart history as a progression not of politics, but of, say, technology? or religion? or pop culture? why does it have to be politics? sure, politics are the reigning staple of humanity. we've seen in history that people without leaders never survive. but still.... we're not just politics. just like the guys who wrote the constitution weren't just business all the time. they had lives, they had families, they had friends, they had hopes, dreams, loves, disappointments, pleasures, and, God forbid, they might have even laughed!
thats the kind of history i want to know about. i read a biography on Abigail Adams and an autobiography of Frederick Douglas. those two books were one of the first times that i honestly enjoyed history. they were real people to me. REAL people. Abigail Adams, the wife of one of our founding fathers, was a kick ass woman. Frederick Douglas was a slave and his autobiography gives HIS account of what it was like to be a slave, and then to have freedom. that i can find myself caring about. not the date the british armada got defeated.
sorry, that was a rant. but seriously. lets think about it. to hate history is a bad sign. they say that those who don't know history are bound to repeat it. and i would agree. maybe we're just on some sort of cycle. the rise and fall of countries. maybe thats why western civ is chronicled through politics. its a scary thought though, that what goes up must come down.
and yet we think we're indestructable. america is the superpower of the world right now. or at least we were one of them. but think about Rome. Rome WAS the world. it was democracy, it was republic, it was progressive, it was good, it was big. AND, it was sacked in one day. it was anihilated by barbarians! that bodes well for america.
the world wasn't meant to be united. that was made obvious when God confused the languages of all the people at the Tower of Babel. but think of this: more and more countries are learning english as a second language. or even a primary language. when i went to africa, almost every educated person could speak english. i had no trouble. and i was an american in kenya. is it a scary thought that we are progressing to one world language? that we could ultimately unite... someway, somehow? woud God confuse our languages again? would it be the end of the world? would it matter? and yet if we all united, would we have anyone else to turn on but God Himself? thats a scary thought.
but, all of this is far in the future. i'm not saying america is going to be destoryed and we'll all speak english and the world will end by 2010. no no. but if history repeats itself, it would seem that we're on due course.
so maybe this was nothing more than a confused rant. and for that i appologize. but its something to think about. where have we been, where are we going, and do we care? let me know what you think. i didn't even go in to everything that my sister and i talked about over lunch, but these were the highlights, so thanks for your time.
oh, and i think i might take a history class while i'm in england.... just to see their side of the revolutionary war.
posted by Joanna at 10:30 AM
|
2 comments
