Sanitizing History

Mr. Green and I were having this discussion about how our text books "clean up" everything so it's more "suitable" for our age group.  It really bugs us.  I mean, the extent of information on human sacrifice by early American culture is almost nonexistent.  It was so much more vicious than "...and sacrificed slaves, POWs, and if the gods demanded - royalty."  That doesn't do much respect to locking up the sacrificee (?) in a wooden cage and fattening them until a priest cut out their heart with a flint/obsidian knife (below is a picture of ceremonial Incan knife) and kicked them down into a pit in the middle of the pyramid-temple whose fall probably killed them when it broke their back or neck.  However if they were still alive that only made it worse, because butchers at the bottom of the pit would lop off their arms and legs to be roasted over and spit and ceremonially eaten.

Ya, just a little different.  But that's how it was, so why don't they tell it to us?  That's kind of like lying.  Furthermore, the book presents only drought as to why the Anasazi went extinct.  It's insane!

The point is if there is one thing I've learned about most  humans over the years is that people don't want to know truth.  They only want to continue living in blissful ignorance.  Not like with the sacrificing, I mean that's kind of detailed, but I mean about other more important things.  People tend to continue believing what they do because they are afraid of change.  (This kind of relates with the story of Darius).  They’ve lived in their perfect little bubble for their entire lives and are too cowardly to take a quick skip out every once in awhile.  They don’t give anything different a second thought.

If I were asked what is the single most recurring theme in history,I'd undoubtedly say that it's that nothing lasts forever and just when we think it does something else replaces it in one universal cycle.

Tags: History, Psyche, Life