THE RECORD

November 03, 1999

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

Growing up in an impoverished East European country during the Great Depression and WW2 we learned not only world geography, but also world history. Much of it was distorted to fit the tenets of fascism, but by and large the chain of events were very accurate. I'll never forget my gepography exam in Grade 2 Gymnasium, about Grade 6 in North American terms, when I received an "A" for correctly naming all the mountain ranges on the West Coast of the Americas from the top of Alaska to the Southernmost tip of South America. I couldn't do it today and doubt that there are many highschool students who could name the ranges of BC, let alone the rest of the Continent.

By the time I left Grade 12 to join the Hungarian army I probably knew more about Canadian history than the vast majority of Canadians ever have. Our three BC born children haven't had a single hour of Canadian, or any other history in their total of 36 years of grade schooling in Vancouver and Williams Lake, from 1964 to 1982.

To say the least, this total absence of information about the country's geography and history was rather shocking for us and I brought it up with several teachers during the time and after our children were in school. Their pat answer was that our knowledge of history was so distorted that by teaching it they would contribute to militarism and chauvinism.

Well, as a student of history for almost 60 years I have to disagree with this nonsense, to say the least. It is very true that countries and societies have been and are distorting facts to suit their own political needs, but this is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The biggest crime against humanity is not necessarily the distortion of history, but the ignorance of it. The failure to recognize the causes, actions and trends that have lead to the rise and fall of literally thousands of empires and societies since the beginning of written history.

On account of this major failure, history has been repeating itself time after time and humanity is sentenced to commit the same horror stories and mistakes generation after generation.

What we have going on in the world today is basically the same chain of events that led to the self destruction of every past empire at the cost of millions of lives, and for generations increadible suffering for the survivors. All we have to do is look up the history of the Roman or any other empire and the picture of our future becomes very clear.

History is not just the boring recounting of stories of long dead heroes and villains, but the chronicle of the unbroken chain of attempted energy theft from others in the name of wealth creation. Peoples, societies and empires did not fight and murder each other because they may have been good or bad, but to steal the energy base of others. This may have been some resource to build glittering cities, or the slaves to build them with. Every major city of every former empire, Rome, Babylon, Paris, London and now New York, Tokyo and so on, have been built from and on the proceeds of stolen resources and energy.

Every economic system of the past and present was built on various forms of faith based theories that not only permitted, but justified and encouraged the thefts of resources and energy from other societies. The only economic systems that survived for any length of time were those like the American Indians and other indigenous peoples that lived for thousands of years in isolation from European influence. All these societies nurtured religious tenets that demanded submission to the forces of Nature, as opposed to our European traditions that have put Man as the controller and lord over all natural resources and forms of life. The results of European style culture are a constant chain of disasters, all for nothing, all preventable.

We can see one result of the very stupid and irresponsible theories in our daily lives in the form of the First Nations landclaims, or as they prefer to put it, our non-native landclaims against their traditional property rights.

Why is this happening and why is it also happening in Australia, Africa, New Zealand, in the former Soviet Union and all over the world? The reason is that throughout history the ruling classes have always believed in the permanence of their superior mental and physical powers. They have thought that people that they considered inferior would just die out, or fade away. In fact in most cases these people proved themselves stronger and outlasted the conquerors.

At work is the simple case of Newton's law of actions causing equal and opposite reactions. It always happens and ultimately always destroys the rulers, but new crops of theorists always come up with new tricks to accomplish the impossible.

Yesterday they were called the colonizers, nazis, communists. Now we have the US and the organizations under their control: NATO, The World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund etc., all designed to put another aristocracy on the world's throne with the inevitable results. One has to wonder, if they ever studied history in school?