Empty homes and history!!

Ok, simple enough explanation for this title I suppose. The short story, I am writing this as I sit in my empty home now, devoid of all furniture and electronics, books and shelves, an empty home. Anyway, I can’t help feel sad that this is the last time I will look upon this place and see it no more. Rather from Edgar Allen’s poem, The Raven… “Quoth the raven nevermore”. Or could be the Green Day’s song Time of your Life… “Its something unpredictable but in the end is right, I hope you had the time of your life” Looking back over the last five years that I lived here, well not exactly “lived” considering that four years I have spent in a hostel, yet there was the knowledge, that yes, there was a place I could go back to… Now I am civil engineer without a home… Where’s the irony in that? Anyway, getting back to more saner things in life… Anyway, I was having a long conversation with one of my good friends, namely Tulika, on the importance of history… I mean why is it important? How does something, someone did a long time ago affect our daily lives? I am probably sure that everyone can get on through life without knowing any history at all as well…But as an ardent learner of history, I feel compelled to defend it. There is a saying, Those who do not know history, are condemned to repeat it. To me this sounds just like a bromide, and this is not the defense I want to use. It seems a very weak defense as well. There are good examples of this being true through the course of history of course. I am sure if people look up the European wars through the ages, it can be seen tat the shortsightedness of the statesmen in looking at immediate gains rather than longer views forced countries into wars which were neither profitable nor worthy. If we can see Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and Hitler’s invasion nearly a century later, we can see that both failed due to the same reasons of fighting wars on two fronts, and of course the perennial General Winter of Russia. Both stopped with sighting distance of Moscow and turned back. Then we can see the colonization processes of Britain, France and now the US and how they all proceed in the exact same manner. It can be even said that they are following centuries old policies of the Romans itself, mainly divide and conquer. Anyway, leaving that defense, I wanted to see how it is useful everyday life itself. What it means to know history and relate it to yourself. I agree that you can go through life without ever knowing history, probably never bother about it all. However imagine how much more richer would the knowledge make you, being able to see things as they are now in their historical context. For example, Giacometti’s statues which to an observer would just seem like badly made cariacatures, but put in their context of being made between the two world wars depict the lonely, desperate times and what man yearned to get out of. An energetic being brought down by an impending sense of doom almost, lonely as it stands against the tide that seems to wipe over humanity. Or Wagner’s music, which on first hearing would seem very good, and it in fact is excellent. But put in the context of Wagner’s philosophies and teachings, would put an anti Semitic face to the music, deploring it of all music. The Nazis would later use this as their purifying music fit for their Master Aryan race. So playing this music for your Jewish friends might not be the best way to fit in with them. Also history teaches us a way of sifting through facts and myth to come up something real, as how people were all those times ago and seeing if what we live in is a better way now? Has the quality of our life been improving or simply a repetition of what our predecessors did? These might not be questions we ask ourselves in the course of daily events, but these are relevant questions if you want to be able to do something different, something what the world had not seen before. In the future, people might debate as to how we used to live, what were our outlooks on life, what were our beliefs, what code of standards did we use to live by. Anyway, history to me personally is like a story, a tale of how man has progressed through the ages. How we have grown from living in caves and dwellings and now have skyscrapers and high rise buildings built into the sky, as if to challenge the very gods themselves to dare stop us.

Anyway, I have been thinking of writing a story for some time now, and have found a good plot line I think… I will put up the starting on the next blog and see how people like it…Guys remember, I am no Isaac Asimov, so don’t expect too much either…