Last year I had the awesome experience of visiting some places from ancient Greek history (places like Troy and Rhodes). The accompanying talks were fascinating and I learned a lot about the history.
In one such talk the guide was telling details of a famous battle, including well known characters, real and mythological, who participated, what kind of weapons and armour they used, what helmets they wore, etc. He spoke for about 20 minutes and asked for questions and someone asked “who won the battle?”. He hesitated and then said he honestly didn’t know.
Thousands of human beings were killed and injured, and what for? History does not even record who “won”.
I was watching a You Tube video of German prisoners of war following World War II. I was looking into the faces of the captured soldiers. Many of them were just teenagers but they all had one thing in common: someone told them to go try to kill people who were strangers to them, and they obeyed. When people are hired by organized crime to do this sort of thing, we call them criminals. When people are hired by the government to do this sort of thing, we call them heroes.
In 2025 we still solve problems the same way we did in 2025 BC. We can ask Putin, or we can ask Israel. Can this ever change?
I believe it can, and I believe it can start with parenting. Maybe if we rethink who we represent to our children as “heroes”, and how we talk with them about history, they may start questioning the messages they get from the world. If changes occur in the hearts and minds of young people, on a large enough scale, the world can change.
Maybe by 4025 people won’t believe that human beings ever tried to resolve conflict by killing each other.
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