Oh where is all this going to end up? Rhetorical question I guess.
I know I have been somewhat quiet of late - put it down in part to there being far too many stories about the POTUS, and a lack of desire to add to that commentary - and as an aside I have never seen so many cartoons in circulation about someone who is supposed to be revered in the world - and clearly is not! Plus the fact that I have a lot on - and have lost focus on doing some of the things I enjoy, like this blog. In fact I have been dabbling with one topic for a few weeks now - all to do with the letter "C"!! But one particular article I read today had me with my head firmly in my hands which, for once, was nothing to do with any excesses of the night before.
We have been aware over many years of the denials or the re-writing of history books by a particular country, to hide previous acts from gaze and hope that, over time, people will forget. The Japanese invasion of China before the second world war is a case in point and in particular the rape of Nanjing that according to Japanese history books never happened. And I cannot forget a dear German friend who came out of the movie Schindler's List in tears saying she "never knew". It had certainly not been a feature of her education in Germany.
And now, in their ongoing quest for so-called creativity we have the movie makers - always ones to portray their own slant on the world - who want to change history. As they say, why spoil what would be a potential blockbuster film by allowing a bunch of facts get in the way. On this occasion it is the true story of a balloon ascent made in the mid 1860s, and which reached what was the highest altitude reached in such a contraption. A story which involved two men, Henry Cowell and James Glaisher, the latter who fell unconscious on the ascent and the former bringing the balloon down safely while having lost the feeling in his hands. Great story from real life! But, say the film makers, wait a minute, wouldn't it be so much better if one of the men was portrayed as a woman? Sure it would - but it would be totally inaccurate, and therefore fictional. And it's not as if there not other women of that era who would have been worthy of movies being made about them. The Scottish suffragette and soccer player Helen Matthews for one.
This seems to me to be yet another manifestation of our desire to be absolutely politically correct, and I am not sure we haven't gone mad over our desire to be equally cognisant of the roles played in the world by women and men. And in this regard there have been some appalling injustices that took place and still exist. Forget simple things like equal pay for which there is no excuse today not to pay the same for the same job irrespective of gender, but it goes all the way through to the Boardrooms of some of the biggest companies globally where the representation of women on boards remains appallingly low and must be fixed. But should we really be tinkering with history? And if that becomes fair game, wherever do we draw the line? The present POTUS will soon have us believing he won the second world war on his own - despite not having been born at the time.
By removing references to people whose behaviour, judged by todays standards, was bad but normal in its time, will eventually lead to our history books becoming unreal and totally inaccurate.
Humankind has been responsible for all sorts of dreadful behaviour - in the past and indeed in the present. The behaviour of some countries leaders who are so corrupt (one the letters "C" I referenced earlier) that their citizens flee their homes and end up as migrants floating around in the ocean in the hope of a better life; the shortages of food, jobs - and heaven help us when AI takes over most of the menial tasks - are we also going to write that out of our history books because there is a better film that could be made with a different slant to it to make it more appealing.
We are now so careful in what we do or say (unless you're Boris or POTUS of course), that it's like treading on eggshells and is stifling real human interaction. No wonder the younger generation is confused. But if we change nothing else, could we not at least leave history alone? It happened. You cannot change it - no matter whether it was right or wrong. What you can do is learn from it.
