My first Post in this series simply called HISTORY was always going to be Part One but I thought about it and dropped the Part One words from the Headline because I wasn’t sure when I was going to do the next one and how many there will be.
This is it now and I can say that I expect the series to go up to Part 6 or thereabouts.
This one is also like the first One different from what will follow in the Parts to come and I want to establish certain principles of history that is quite obviously unknown or not generally understood. Maybe they are only my opinions but I shall leave every reader deciding on his/her own conclusions.
The first point is that though it should not be so any opinion of recorded history largely depends on who wrote the book and/or who reads it. AND [kindly note the capitals] unfortunately it also depends on when it was written and when it is read.
In my own reading career I once read Memoirs of General Grivas on the Cyprus wars between Greeks and Turks. I couldn’t make up my mind who to support. When I read the book again 20 years later I still could not take sides between Grivas and Makarios and be honest with myself.
In the early sixties I read Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru and was impressed. Thirty years later I was even more impressed by the great Man when I read the book again. I put him above Gandhi on the World scales of measurement of greatness. The strange anomaly in our country is that many people remember Gandhi [some despise him and some adore him; personally I don’t see him as any great figure in History] but very few ever read anything on Nehru.
My third and last example on the point should suffice.
Having been an adult life long supporter of a multi racial but united South Africa [classified as an extreme Liberal which I was not, though I was a Paton admirer and Fan] I could hardly wait to buy my personal copy of Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela.
I tried to read the book; put it aside several times and tried again and again but something didn’t gel; it became obvious that it was not Mandela’s own writing though it was enthusiastically promoted as the words of the “Great Icon.” I put the book aside for a number of years and re-read it after his attack on America with the warning about Gadaffi that “your enemies are not our enemies,” and after he had informed his successor, a wimp of a man called Thabo Mbeki, to give the prisoners the vote in M’Beki’s election to the Presidency in 1999. That time I managed to get through it with a feeling of despair for our country growing in my mind. The book was nothing more than a personal song of praise to an enormous ego in a large vacuum of utter emptiness.
I have learned to read all history as the opinion of one person. This is therefore, the way you can and should, read this. It is an opinion and I would like to hear from you before I go onto a very important Part Three about parallels and repetition of history.
You may read this Post in the meantime:
http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/20/europe-is-partying-like-its-1939/
Ike Jakson
In Americus GA saka Americoon
Jaksonian Philosophy 