In Search of a History
by Richard Hiatt
Page one

Reasons for the apocalyptic changes in the world are as
varied as the
professions that cover it. Go to a surgeon for an ailment and he'll
tell
you need surgery. Go to a dietician and he'll say its your diet.
A
chiropractor will say it's your joints.
The irony is that all are probably right to some extent
at some point
along the way. And certainly the global epidemics which now reach so
far
into and beyond one another require specific cures for specific regions
suffering specific problems. There is no panacea except collective
participation on levels that heretofore have never even seemed related.
From just one of those trajectories is the crisis of one
nation without
an identity. With the free market establishing itself abroad, foreign
companies settling into the quaintest rural communities, the center
of
world currency shifting overseas, the Internet, faster transportation,
etc., we have but only a few traditional bearings left with which to
identify the ground and substance of what is "American."
We have geography, language, a standard of living, and
a short history.
But the most critical of these, history, has been relegated to the
bin of
irrelevance for the more lucrative conveniences of entertainment whose
provenience springs from instant access, illiteracy and narrow attention
spans.
Without history for ballast, say the experts, the most
critical
cornerstone of all to a people in need of an identity never solidifies.
Geography, language and living standards are rendered inert and
meaningless. History is the one anchor which modern technology and the vagaries
of a post modern economy (inflation, war, closed factories) cannot steal
away. History gives a nation an indelible compass with which to embrace
whatever present and future confronts it. Without history, our
society is ineluctably referenced to the metaphor of a rudderless
ship out to sea.
Page two: Young children learn best by means of stories...
Copyright © 1998, 2005 Richard Hiatt. All rights reserved.
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