Changing the Course of History

 

In my previous job, I had two parallel cases of doing research on something where I was able to look up something that happened in the past, including reading what people were saying about it at the time, and then speak to those same people in the present. (Apologies for having to blur the details for confidentiality's sake.)

In one situation, the past event took place decades ago, and the news coverage at the time presented people feeling very conflicted about the event, for there were some things that made them happy and other things that made them sad. But, when I was able to flag them down in the present, their recollection of the event was that they were 100 percent against it back then and 110 percent against it now. 

In the other situation, the past event took place just a few years back, and certain people were quoted as being for the thing, but those same people in the present had changed their mind and realized that they were now against the thing and wished they'd known then what they knew now, because if they did then they wouldn't have been for the thing back then.

In the second case, somebody changed their mind. They believed one thing before, and a different thing now. That happens all the time, or should: we learn new things, or our realization of a matter becomes clearer over time, and we decide that something we once liked we now have a completely different opinion on.

In the first case, somebody changed their mind also, but they were unwilling to accept that their position on something was now different, so they rewrote history by saying that whatever they're feeling about something now, they felt the same back then. This too happens all the time, but is less commendable: the value of being honest of our changing our mind is, in such cases, lower than the value of being seen as having consistently been on whatever is thought to be the "right side of history" all along.

History, as it was once explained to me, is not a recording of the past, but rather is "someone's" recording of the past. It is not always accurate to the facts, and it is not always immutable. Historians have great power to codify what was the accepted take on a matter, and we have great power to accept their take or scrutinize it. "Narrative" is powerful, as is simplicity. In fact, reality is often far more complex and messy. Take care!