A Short Lesson in History

 "All too often we assume that history is a true and faithful account of events as they actually took place and people as they actually were. We tend to forget that people who lived in the past (and recorded the events of those days), were ordinary human beings who were as vulnerable to the temptation to color events according to their own beliefs, agendas and prejudices as are people living today".
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." ~ George Orwell, '1984'.

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‎"Who controls the present controls the past"- history is written by the winners, or at least those history that we learnt in school. We only read (or heard) of the "loser's" history most likely with the advent of the information age and internet.

"Who controls the past controls the future"- this is harder to imagine. But essentially a parallel with its following sentence "who controls the present...". Common sense dictates that no one can control the future. It is in our hands that we shape our future.

Orwell had the vision to realized that in the absense of "questioning" (for lack of a better word) on our part, the future does belong to whomever that holds power presently-the 'winners'. Remember, it is still the winners, the 'present' powers that be - that controls what is our history.

For if the only history we know are the ones where the tyrants and aggressors laid upon us, then in that sense, were they not in effect controlling ours and our children's future? In the end, history really teaches us nothing. For it tends to repeat itself.