Control of the past

A very small thing that stuck with me within this reading was the mention of a seemingly unremarkable slogan of the Party that goes: "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." I found it hard to relate to many aspects of 1984's world, but this slogan struck a chord in me, because the time we're living through right now has seen a movement to re-examine our understanding of our nation's past. While we Americans don't try to control the past the way Oceania would (or do we? Let me know in the comment section :D), we have the hindsight to see how historical attitudes about various topics has changed over time, and we see that those attitudes depended entirely on the cultural attitudes of that time - or we could say, what vein of ideas was "in power" at the time. 

As it's Black History Month I might use the topic of black history for an example. As we all know, race relations between black people and other races in America has changed drastically throughout our history, but also, the way we look at the history of black Americans has ranged the gamut from being extremely degrading to being celebratory of their achievements in face of discrimination and oppression. This reflects the ideas in "control" of American culture regarding race at different times, like early 20th-century deep-seated racism versus today's antiracism movement. Can we say that we have attempted to "control the past" by silencing black voices and suppressing the discussion of black history until recently? Your response to that question might happen faster than your answer to the following question: Are we similarly attempting to "control the past" in the present day by highlighting black voices and facilitating discussion of black history?

While I could flesh out some of the ideas I have in response to those questions right here and point out a few key differences between America's and Oceania's approaches to history, I think we could get some thoughtful discussion in the comments about these questions.

Comments

  1. DinaFebruary 9, 2021 at 7:47 AM

    Cool post! I also touched on this control of the present & past issue a bit and honestly I think every society does it to a degree, whether we know it or not. Again, if there was censorship/change of record, we wouldn't know because we'd just take what we see from the government as fact. Kinda sus right (_ _|||)

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  2. L. MoffittFebruary 9, 2021 at 8:10 AM

    Very interesting discussion. There's a saying (that has almost become clichee) that history is written by the victors. There is no one single "right" way of seeing the past; a multitude of perspectives gets closer to the truth, I suppose, so highlighted different voices allows for different angles. The pitfall comes in assuming all these viewpoints are equally valid. Complicated stuff.

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