“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books — books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe.
As Napoleon once said, ‘What is history, but a fable agreed upon?’
By Its very nature, history is always a one-sided account.”From the book: The Da Vinci Code
I couldn’t agree more.
I’ve been wanting to write about this for a long time, but never came around to doing it. This quote in The Da Vinci Code said it wonderfully and rekindled that thought in my mind.
This also brings me back to my previous post about Truth, where I talk about how relative truth is, and how there is no such thing as absolute truth.
There are different versions of the truth, just like there are different versions of history. It’s just that the winners get to force their version on everyone else.
But that doesn’t make it any more true.
I guess what I’m saying is that people shouldn’t always believe what they hear or read in history books, because that’s only one side of the story.
The only way is to try and look at the different sides of the story and try to put it all together to create a personal understanding of it.