IS HISTORY RELIABLE?

LUISA FERNANDA ESCOBAR P.

What do you think when you look back?... I mean not just look back at your life, it’s more something like looking back at your nation, your continent, how about the world?

As humans we have infinity of questions, the thing is most of them won’t ever be answered; I’m not talking about math questions and lab answers, I might just be speaking about that one question, that certainly, we all have had: who are we, where are we from, what makes us the nation and the society we are, why and how.

As an economy student each class solves as many questions as new ones pop out in my head… History might be one of my biggest doubts, how do we know history books don’t lie, how can we possibly say that after thousands of years the story being told hasn’t changed, as a personal opinion, I’m more than sure that each time that the story has passed from one generation to the other (oral or written), it has changed; under those terms, what could we really consider our history? I mean, because there are so many ways to manipulate history, to manipulate a society into believing a story that is not its own, irrefutable proof of it is our own nation, our own continent and our own society, the one we are part of.

I have wondered so many times about ideas, the history of ideas. Humans are incredible beings, each day we are witnesses of our capabilities of creation, of evolution and of recreation; but, as an economist, I wonder if ideas are property of someone, if I was asked to answer I would resoundingly say no due to the human nature and its evolution, also due to the advances our planet has had in the past simultaneously without the societies involved having contact and finally due to the amount of copies and replicas made of the same creation, experiment, idea or theory; comic enough, many of these do have property, at least nowadays.

Today, many companies basically pay someone to think for the company and their ideas rather than being their property will no longer be and the rights of the idea will immediately be the company’s, somehow ideas have just passed from being great creations of a human being to actuality taking place as one more reason to transact money.

If we contrast the actual status of ideas with its past status we can basically make ourselves an impression of how the world, hasn’t changed, somehow it has just adjusted to the now ruling conditions. In the past, many people had discovered so many theories, so many really great ideas, but they are not known because of their ideas yet others are known because of the same ideas. Suddenly your wonder about history acquires a bigger depth; in economic matters ironically many ideas and concepts were born in what we know as the east of our planet yet the developers and who is known for conceiving the ideas are western, and off course you wonder, did the west actually think these ideas or did they steal them and made them theirs’, and once again you doubt about the history you know.

As humans, most of us have bought the ideas, the theories and basically the way of living powerful nations have sold us, and sorrowfully we have bought all of these without a doubt, with all certainness that these are the best, the evolution, I mean, we should all be part of that special system in which we will have the best living conditions, but, at what cost and harming who, forgetting what. Specially, why is their model the only one right? Why can’t we think different? Why is different silenced?

Somehow when I think about ideas, nations, economy and history I wonder so much more than I could ever possibly answer, because, truth be told, past is past and all we know is what we have been said. But who said it and why, furthermore is it true? Because who says we are south and not north? Who says south and north even do exist, what about east and west? After all we are a sphere, aren’t we? Who says maps aren’t designed for some nations to look bigger than others? Who says there is only one way of thinking in a “free globalized planet”? Who ever said that only one theory, one way of living could be the correct? Who said, an idea has property.