The crisis of history

By Reyshimar Arguelles

The task of historians is fairly simple: describe and interpret past events based on evidence. Firsthand accounts, documents, artifacts, and the like are among the tools a historian uses to gather information that would provide us with a glimpse into the past. But history does not function strictly for documenting the good and bad in humankind.

How we use this information in the present will depend on the kind of future we want to live in. To sum up what Orwell had written in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, “who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” It is so much easier to build a future without having to rely on the moral underpinnings of past events.

The philosopher George Santayana cautions us about not learning from history’s mistakes. Nothing good ever comes out of fatal nostalgia where you either justify a past crime or deny it all together so as to give way to future crimes. In Orwell’s novel, social control is better attained when people are divorced from an oppressive past.

Of course, Philippine society has not descended into the Oceanian dystopia that many of Orwell’s fanboys have been fetishizing about. Then again, we have never really acknowledged the lessons of the past so as to make the conscious effort of preventing our descent into complete madness.

We lack a learning curve. That alone should be enough to scare us out of our wits. We don’t need a Thought Police or a Ministry of Truth to dictate how we ought to treat the past. We already have a narrow sense of morality that lets us see the past as a dimension independent of the present.

For Bongbong Marcos, the past never really happened. He sees his family as victims of history writers who painted a non-existent visage of his father’s regime. In light of the evidence of the Marcos administration’s crimes against the Filipino people, Bongbong seeks to alter pieces of Philippine history that should remain with us as we assume a moral obligation to build a better future, one that considers corruption, cronyism, and strongman populism as artifacts of a turbulent time.

It is clear that those who have no faith in the past have no faith in building a better society for all. Bongbong believes he can save the future by revising school textbooks and absolving his father’s role in turning Philippine society into a grotesque landscape where Ferdie is god-emperor.

Building a just society is impossible we never recognize what injustice looks like. The Hacienda Luisita Massacre, which has tarnished the Cojuangco-Aquino name that former President Noynoy Aquino so passionately links with heroism and uprightness, has become a symbol of farmers’ struggle against corporate oppression. We cannot let such atrocities dissolve into obscurity. And while the struggle for genuine land reform goes on, we should never lose sight of running after the perpetrators and letting them answer history’s indictment.

To ignore the lessons of the past will indeed spell doom for all of us. As the U.S. locks horns with Iran with the Trump administration’s reckless foreign policy, lasting peace could hardly be attained. The U.S. can never be the world’s policeman forever so long as it maintains an agenda of promoting hegemony and destabilizing peace by its own twisted actions.

Indeed, we have a lot more to learn from. history, but we have yet to take a significant stride when it comes to learning about the past and preventing fatal errors from resurfacing.

To change history does not erase culpability. To deny its impact on the present does not make angels out of criminals. We need to appreciate its value if ever we strive for a more rational, moral world.