How does what happened yesterday in your life affect what you choose to do today?...or does it? Do we all see yesterday the same way? Choose a material object--get your digital camera... take at least 25 photos of it all from different angles or vantage points. Team up with a class member and have them photograph the same object -- compare and contrast your photos on a blog post. How do different human beings view the same object? - from Norman Constantine
Even the concept of something like the past is incredibly controversial. For instance, that sentence that I just typed was written in the past. Some would say that things written, done, or said in the past are less accurate than what is written in the present. But is that sentence any less true than it was when my fingers hit the keys at the beginning of this response? The whole concept of past, present, and future is completely mind-boggling, and it's incredibly hard to explain. Is there really such a thing as present? Or does every moment simply go from future to past? Everyone's view point is going to be different. Which explains why the concept of history is so confusing. It's impossible to tell how accurate a historic source is unless you are one as well. Even if the person you're talking to experienced the event first hand, there's no telling what they didn't hear or see. Many points of one event can be missed, and before you know it, the story is passed down so many times that barely any of the details are the same. Philosopher George Santayana once said, "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." However, if we do not know what truly happened in the past, is it really possible to avoid its repetition? The past influences us in different ways, depending on the outcome of an event. We are taught that because of the deaths caused by mass acts of discrimination, like the Holocaust, we need to be more open minded and accepting of those who are different from us. This is a good lesson to learn. However, if all of those killed had really been criminals, others might have felt like they deserved what they got. Would the lesson still be the same? Most likely not. The lessons we learn from history depend on the viewpoint from which they were taught. In the musical Wicked, Stephen Schwartz writes the song "Wonderful," which contains the line, "A man's called a traitor - or liberator. A rich man's a thief - or philanthropist. Is one a crusader - or ruthless invader? It's all in which label is able to persist!" This is all saying that the titles and views of characters in history depend on the viewpoint of the person who is telling the story. Hope Kelly and I took a camera to school and took turns taking photos of our friend Casey in the chorus room. These are the pictures we chose from the 50 we took altogether:
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| Photo 1 |
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| Photo 2 |
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| Photo 3 |
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| Photo 4 |
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| Photo 5 |
Each of these photos was taken from a different viewpoint, and some of them (photos 1 and 5, for instance) could arguably be seen as two different people. Because we are two different people, Hope and I took photos that will not look exactly the same. My focus was more looking down, while Hope's was more frontal and looking up at Casey. We have two different points of view, so our stories will be told differently, and past records will not be identical. Overall, past records are taken to remember, to teach lessons, and to remain as reminders of events. But it is very hard to get an accurate, unbiased view of the past. We all have different minds, so our tales of journeys and events will never be identical.
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