REVISIONISM | 2006-06-24
A commenter reminded me that there is such a thing as historical revisionism.
So let me remind you of three rules:
1) The past is never what the historians says it was;
2) The present is never what the official commenters say it is; and
3) The future is never what the paid futurologists say it will be.
So, the commenter asks, how can we review a history that is so often wrong? He is loooking
at point 1)
The truth of the matter lies in point 2)
All history and all futurology is based on the present, and on NOTHING else. Everything a
professional historian writers or puts on a documentary is cleared with those who have power
in the present. Just as all roads led to Rome, all history leads to the present.
To put this in plain English, the purpose of history is to show the influences that led to
the year 2006 as described on the newscasts. Today, interracial marriage is what every
decent person in history aspired to, but the production of a chuman by breeding humans with
chimpanzees, on which both Japanese and Russians began work, is an abomination.
That is how it is, os htat is the way everyone in hitory looked at it. If they didn't, you
excuse them and show how they went wrong.
When the movie Soylent Green was made in the 1970s, every campus rang with the cry "Zero
Population Growth!" Every official historian and demographer showed how all decent opinion
had always led tot his conclusion.
Japan is a GREAT copier, like all Oriental countries. When we took up the ZPG cry. they
took it up better.
Every advanced country's population is now aging. The biggest argument for open borders
today is how in the 1970s America, by some odd coincidence, did not produce enough young
people, so the third world, which was not listening to the ZPG crap, has to pour its
surpluses in here.
The connection is never made, of course. No historian or commenters could keep his job if
he made it. So the futurologists who predicted Soylent Green are now a little older and a
lot better paid, with all that experience and seniority behind them.
This is not a contradiction. They ARE more experienced. You have to understand what they
are experienced AT. We all knew thirty years ago that the only reason you would look at
what a demographer or a futurologist wrote thirty years before would be to get a good horse
laugh. But we still made a good try at destroying ourselves on their say-so.
Japan, as a the ultimate Oriental copier nation, is actually dying out because, along with
all that technology they superadopted in the 1970s, they also superadopted the West's ZPG
craze as Eternal Truth.
So if futurologists are always wrong, what are they Experienced Experts AT?
They are experts at producing the kind of prediction that gets grants and gets published.
You do not tell those in power today that they will be out of power tomorrow. You do not
tell today's ruling intellectual elite that people will be laughing at their present
fashiones -- like ZPG -- so hard they will be busing a gut.
It is true that futurologists are always predicting things that has the next generation
laughing so hard it busts a gut. That is what they do for a living, and they are good at
it.
You see, a historian, a contemporary commentator, and a futurology is EXACTLY like a
respectable conservative. He knows how to produce history or predictions or criticisms of
Political Corectness, respectively, which are just radical enough to look like a serious
challenge to modern thought, but never attacks anything BASIC.
Anyone who is worried about the information he receives should first think carefully over
the fundamental question: How is that information PRODUCED?
You wouldn't buy a computer mouse without considering this question, but when policy determinations are made, it is totally forgotten.