At times I think what I'm doing is recording the history of Weyburn, which includes some of the events as well as some insights into how people live around here these days. I feel tremendously honoured to have this duty from the perspective of historians, but I really don't know if we are truly witnessing history by reading a paper or by watching the news.
Is what we have condensed into these or any other pages really to be taken as the official word on what truly happened? How do we know they were reliable? Heaven knows I can't always be there, 'on', or on time, or accurate. We scribes can only do our best.
Every story has three sides - and some have a thousands.
Maybe I've spent too much time listening to conspiracy theories, but I am inclined to believe that, at least as far as the history of our known past is concerned, we haven't got the full picture about what it was like to live in the past. This is partly because we did not have the technology to record all happenings on Earth objectively (as is the case now, I assume in my paranoid way), much less the technology of the written word for the masses. They say most people were illiterate until recent history. But maybe humans were here before they think we were. Maybe they were smarter, too.
As far as we know, spoken word was how we passed down information from generation to generation, yet how reliable is that, considering, for example, the inevitable outcome in the game, 'gossip'?
Let's face it - history is not made up solely of great men and the dates on which their triumphs occurred.
History is filled with endless untold stories. It wasn't until my university-level history courses that I realized there were so many other perspectives on what really happened in the past. I learned more about my own life and my path, as well as reality in general, just from reading about the lives of women and children during the fur trade years of early Canadian history, than I ever do reading about the decisions of the so-called great leaders of our time.
Thanks to the Internet, each day there are endless stories being told, with first-hand accounts that often include additional commentaries from peers, colleagues and even adversaries. A world wide web of stories indeed it is, and it is creating a new history.
People are talking about everything online and anyone can connect with almost everyone. With my (new) Twitter account, I can tag anyone I can think of and, even if they are a world-known celebrity, they can see it and respond to me. It's happening - our small world is shrinking.
Anyone familiar with the works of author James Redfield knows that he correlates the human development of technology with what is becoming possible for humans to do without the aid of technology. For example, he purports that the inventions of the telephone and radio are precursors to the eventuality of humans evolving their psychic abilities (both receiving and transmitting). The invention of flying machines is a signifier that, some day, we will evolve our potential for flight. My favourite correlation, of course, is that of information accessibility. The Internet is absolutely a symbol, an external representation, of what is possible within humans already. I don't know if it's actually evolution, or if it's just an awakening from within - because we have it within us to know more, intuitively, than we realize.
All we ever really need to know is remembered each lifetime, again and again, even if it isn't passed on verbally from one generation down to the next. All information is stored within our DNA and it is also more easily accessible when we eat real food.
When it comes to ultimate history, we all have limited perceptions. The only way to ensure an accurate future history is to be honest and to keep an open mind - don't perpetuate memes about the past that you don't know to be factual. Celebrate mystery.
Honour your life by recording your own story. Let's have something to hand to our descendents about our lives and also encourage them to record their lives for their own descendents.
Cliché of the week: Remember, if we don't learn our history, we may be doomed to repeat it.
