What’s real and what’s not? How do we separate fact from fiction?
Ive been in a state of watching a bunch of videos and listening to old stuff, reliving the more nostalgic parts of my life and feeling nostalgia for things that were not actual nostalgia to me but to others. Apparently Disneyland was an exercise in nostalgia for Walt.
First off, what is nostalgia? Oxford says it is: a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.
Now, lets jump to history. What is history? History is what has happened in the past… according to those who documented it. I think it’s safe to say true history is actually lost. If you are looking for a true and factual record, you will never actually find one. People’s perspectives taint what has happened in the past so you will always be learning about events through the slight (or in some cases not slight at all) skewing of facts. I will look through my nostalgic view of the 80’s and give you a totally inaccurate recounting of that decade, although to me it’s 100% accurate. No biggie right, it’s me, I’m not important… there are lots of ‘real’ sources of what happened in the 80’s… right?
This is where things get scary. If you pick up an US almanac of the 80’s and a Russian almanac of the 80’s I bet you will read two very different stories.
So what’s real and what’s not? The old saying that ‘history is written by the victors’ is absolutely true. Maybe nowadays you can substitute ‘victor’ with ‘person with access to the internet’ or ‘person with more money’, etc. but it still rings true… facts are (more and more) prisoner to perspective. I am sure Chris and I can argue about something that both of us know as fact. We can probably both find supporting evidence online for our topic as well.
So what’s all this mean, why am I even writing about this? Well, I read this comment online about early Disneyland and someone was virtue signaling about how people were so bent out of shape about this or that about Disneyland when they should have been going on about the human trafficking and forced prostitution promoted by early Pirates of the Caribbean.
What stuck in my mind about it was this… what if those things were NOT initially put into the ride? What would that produce? What impact have those items IN the ride produced since it was built? What has been produced due to their removal? Let me just throw some of my opinions out there (so you can be be offended by them and comment)…
- Not having those scenes in the ride in the first place would have further (more than it already is) lessened the impact of what a pirate was (they were truly nasty, murderous people… if we are to believe history).
- Having them removed (as they did in the 2000’s) has now sanitized the idea of the pirate further (see bullet point #1).
- Leaving them in there would have continued to keep people (including children) having conversations about the history of pirates.
So what was the goal of removing them? What is:
- To sanitize the nefarious deeds of pirates further? Unlikely.
- To placate people who like to complain about things? Maybe.
- To give Disney the chance to virtue signal, showing certain demographics (which ones? who can say…) that their company is thoughtful, considerate to the more sensitive of us, and/or wanting to show that they do not condone any part of such acts (funny since they’d really need to close the whole ride, but whatever…). Yes, I think this is the answer. I think this is why it was done, a PR move.
So how does this topic weigh on society as a whole? Kiddos in future will never know there was a fat pirate searching for a giggling towns-woman, looking for a good time. Or that pirates bid on stolen personal possessions of towns sacked (as opposed to bidding on women… even a woman who is seemingly looking forward to it).
Do these PC changes mean anything to human society? It’s honestly doesn’t seem like it until you take EVERYTHING into account… movies, books, music, etc. The sum of these changes do change our perspective on pirates.
Infact, the sum of all changes on anything change our perspective on everything. Nothing is in fact… factual since the sum of all human perspective had tainted absolutely everything.
Man, there should be a college course on this kinda stuff cause it could go real deep and it’s about absolutely about any and everything… oh wait I think it’s called sociology…
Man, and that is probably skewed as well depending on the professor who presents it and their past experiences… my head is spinning.
So what do you do about it all? Do you fight further change to preserve what has been laid out (like protecting confederate statues or the changing of building names)? Do you promote the change in hopes to either placate those who don’t agree with what is out there or protect the feelings of a few? How might the changes affect the future of our society… are you considering that?
So let’s circle back to my initial questions and insert some stuff we discussed.
What’s real and what’s not? How do we separate fact from fiction? Well, apparently nothing is real. We cannot separate fact from fiction. History has been written by the winners, the complainers, the virtual signalers, and every single person who recorded it because of their personal past experiences. What can we do about it? Not much. We need to just take in the INPUT, process it best we can, then our OUTPUT needs to be based on that INPUT with the understanding that the INPUT is a estimate… there truly is no black and white, only shades of gray.
Why is this so rambling? Why am I even writing this? I don’t know…
Let’s jump back to my statement that EVERYTHING is tainted and can not be fact because of human interaction… well what if we have a video camera recording constantly? No one ever edits it, it is never moved and it records everything. It’s initial placement is determined randomly. Can we consider what we see from it actual fact? At that point it will be skewed only at the point it comes in contact with a human eye… who is there to instantly place meanings on the images presented. I am sure you can have 2 people instantly argue about something seen on those images so how do you reconcile that? How do you not go insane thinking about this sort of thing? You could have another college course on this kind of stuff… oh wait… I think it’s called psychology.
Man all this from reading one 2 sentence comment on YouTube…