Thursday, April 12, 2007
I’ve been reading, somewhat at Firestone’s suggestion last summer, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. So far I’m up to the Flour Riot of 1837. What surprises me most is that in 1980, when the book was published, the idea of a counter-history of the invisible and the unrepresented was so novel that Zinn has to continually justify it; nowadays that’s the stuff of freshman history class. It’s a little tiring to read about so much injustice, rapaciousness and oppression on my morning commute though. I guess I could read the morning newspaper instead.
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Yes, it can be depressing, but within all the suffering and greed, there are the voices of Sojourner Truth and others, passing on the great spirit of humanity. As each of us looks at the past, and the present, will we turn away in disgust from it, and abandon ourselves to a solitary pursuit of individual comfort and complacency, or will we see the germ of a better idea that must be preserved, enhanced, and expanded among all of our peoples? Easy enough choice for me, but then again, one of my hobbies is torture victimhood.
Where did you get that lotion?
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