AQQ
"Nations do not shake off their origins, they only learn to see them in different ways."
J. M. Roberts, History of the World (New York: Oxford, 1993), p. 519.
Comment on this Archival Quality Quotation:
By saying that we learn to see our origins in different ways it might be assumed that means to whitewash the past and see our origins in terms flattering to ourselves. This has been often done. Apparently the Aztec historians did this, though the historians of the nations around them were well aware that this was propaganda, and that the Aztecs though the dominant group had a highly unflattering origin compared with the others. Other groups have done the same, but self-delusion often leads to destruction, and this has a tendency to bring out the truth. The past is much harder to hide than most people think. Virtually no one now believes the Nazi version of the past. I think what is really meant here is that as we learn more about our past we gain a deeper understanding of who we are and how we got to this point; as we gain more understanding we are able to see more in the past, and this leads to more self-knowledge: the more you know the more you can learn. As Collingwood once said: "A people, like a single individual, is what its past has made it."
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