The other great danger we must avoid is tendency to gloss over, misread, simplify, and attribute significance to historical events in order to justify our theories and narratives.
Terrible wrongs and injustices have been perpetuated throughout history by those who craft narratives based on overdetermined causes and stories from the past.
Be on your guard. The Truth of history is that We Do Not Know.
The Perceived Reality of what actually was experienced and perceived by all people on all sides of every situation can never be known, much less the total Reality of what actually occurred.
The total inputs and causes, and the total outcomes and impacts, can never be known.
In the infinitely complex system of systems that encompasses our total physical and metaphysical world, causes are always overdetermined. The Reality is always far more complex than we can comprehend.
Especially when it comes to justifications for religious, ideological, or political belief or movements, there is nothing more dangerous than a dogmatic insistence on the Reality of what happened in the past, or its significance in regards to the Wise Right thing to do today.
And yet as human beings we inherently occupy a narrative structure, seated in a deep apparent need or desire to know where we are, how we got here, and where we are going in the future.
The knowledge, wisdom, and experience of humanity throughout the ages is our most precious Collective Inheritance, insofar as it can be reconciled, redeemed, and sorted out to discover the common threads and gems of Wisdom and Truth.
There is rational and critical thought / knowledge, there is revelatory thought / knowledge, and there is historical and traditional thought / knowledge.
All must be considered in order to begin to triangulate towards the Truth of the Reality we find ourselves in.
Forward to 8.5 Taking Sides And Assigning Blame In The Past
Back to 8.3 Speaking In General And Glossing Over The Sacred Stories And Traditions
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