Old Moparz
member
Bob
Joined: 08/18/08
Posts: 5,759
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Some discussions can become dead ends because people will dig in their heels to make a point no matter which side of the discussion they are on. Sometimes it leads to the thought process of, "I need to make my point known regardless of who's feelings I may step on." I see this thread now doing the same, but I'd like to add something to it that hasn't really been directly addressed.
What happened 64 years ago was horrible, (no matter which side of the debate) but what was also a big part of why things happened the way they did, was because of the mindset that people had at the time. Society was very different than it is now. People did not have access to the info or current events the way they do today. That also included access to history that was documented from a different viewpoint, or even a different country. Look at the way you access info now. You go online & google it to get thousands of pages worth.
There is also TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, text books, & more. Most have covered historical events, but they either didn't exist 64 years ago, or were not accessible to the average person. True, not all the websites or info can be trustworthy, but it's there to read, see, & interpret for yourself. The media that existed back then was fed info by a select few, & whatever it was fed, was closely controlled a lot more than it can be now. Releasing of documents years later usually proves that what happened was never exactly the same as what people were told during that time.
My parents were born during WWII & were teenagers in the 50's. I was born just before Vietnam exploded, & a teen in the 70's. There was a huge difference in what they believed to be a fact compared to what I believed to be fact, simply based on actions by the government & how we were told about it. They saw carefully scripted news reels about what was going on, I saw protests, Vietnam on TV, watched a president get caught lying & resign, & wondered how the hell things changed so much from the time they were kids until the time I was old enough to see it. It was perhaps the tail end of believing everything the government did was the 100% truth.
You can easily take your access to info for granted, I know I have. My parents still believe in certain things based on how they grew up. I suppose it's difficult to change the way you are, or accept that everything you were told or taught, was "a little different" than it really was at the time it happened. They do have that mindset that the US government will always do things for the best interest of it's people. I believe it to be true a certain extent, but I believe it to be more about profits & self serving interests of a select few first.
The many different things I was taught, heard, saw, or believed as a kid or a teen, sometimes changed as I got older. Things we learned in school, saw on TV, maybe even read in books, or even saw in a movie. The way people accepted things as fact, or what was considered to be acceptable, isn't that way anymore. Native Americans were savages that would scalp innocent people for almost no reason. The Soviet Union was waiting off shore with submarines ready to nuke us at any moment. I don't even want to go into what kind of racist crap was rampant & never even questioned. Even though my parents have an older mindset, they did teach me to question authority, so at least they weren't too pig-headed & stubborn.
I'm not interested in changing anyone's mind on what they believe, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I'll have my own opinion on an issue, but not until I've gathered facts from a trustworthy source & weigh in both sides of a discussion evenly & fairly. I'll listen to the other side if it can present it's ideas civilized & remain open minded to my views. While seemingly well constructed & thought out, some of the comments are written by people with no info in their profile, so I have no idea if they're high school students forming an opinion on something they've just read about, or if they've been around long enough to have lived through major events.
I believe that by having not been born yet for parts of history, that you lose an important piece of it. I've read & learned about different topics, but you can easily overlook the magnatude of an event by only reading about it. Emotions can also be a factor in learning. My Grandmother once told me about how she remembered putting my Father into the crib when she heard the news on the radio about the bombings at Pearl Harbor. My Grandfather was in the Navy at the time, so you can only imagine what she was actually thinking about.
No matter how much history you research, or how many statistics you tally on how many people died, & unless you were around to understand what was going on around you, you will never fully understand what happened, or capture the mindset of the way people felt during that time.
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