For countless centuries, scientists, philosophers, archeologists, and historians, have been pursuing the goal of revealing the truth about the events that happened before their birth. Multitudes of lives have been spent toiling over massive records of relevant episodes in the epic of man's existence. And yet, while the effort behind these actions has not been futile, has any common truth, or agreement on such a truth come into being? While these people have sought to eliminate all error from the accounts of specific events, have they succeeded in anything but incorporating the views of their own time into these precious recollections of history? It seems that if so much time and energy has been channeled into the preservation and reconstruction of this subject, a certain outcome of accuracy and fact should result. And yet, all that is said about any event that occurred in the past, be it the existence of King Arthur, or the fall of the Ming Dynasty, can be argued, debated, and ultimately, proven to be completely false.
The quest for truth that inspires historians can be considered to be a foolish enterprise, as no truth is ever revealed. It is impossible to obtain a completely accurate account of any given event, as no human being is omniscient. "Whoever wants the total reality," writes Jacques Barzun," must first gain access to the mind of God". The error that so many consider to be the ultimate flaw of history is indeed history in itself. We cannot escape our nature. To be human is to err, and to form bias, and make mistakes. Even when one attempts to obtain pure knowledge, one is already bound to a certain opinion of the subject, regardless of one's wishes. The reason history exists is to provide inconsistent, flawed accounts of the conflicts that lead up to the current state of affairs.
Any action worth the interest of a person living hundreds, even thousands of years later than the action occurred, must be quite remarkable. If the human race lived in perfect harmony, never erring in its decisions, or making ridiculous little mistakes, there would be no need to record the past, as it would be boring and monotonous. Every incident that comes to be preserved as a fragment of history is the result of a mistake on behalf of some unfortunate individual. Take the fame of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, for example. The idol of multitudes of people for thousands of years, currently worshipped by 33% of the world , he is perhaps the most well known personage in Western Civilization. And yet, would he be quite this famous if Judas Iscariot had not betrayed him to the sate? Would Jesus' characteristic image of suffering remain intact if Pontius Pilate had used a different, less painful way, of disposing of criminals than crucifixion? Would the life of Jesus interest anybody if he did not die so valiantly, and if it were not described with the fervernt passion and exaggeration found in the New Testament?
It is the element of human error and opinion that makes history as it is. It is impossible to escape the capacity of the human mind. To remove the error and bias that permeate historical accounts would be to modify history itself, which is exactly what everyone seeks to avoid. Plagued by the guilt of being imperfect, historians fail to realize that it is this imperfection that is the root of history, and the only reason it exists. Independence from human imagination, thought, and even general stupidity, is unthinkable and unnecessary. The curiosity with which humans perceive the world around them, whether in the present, or the past, is enough to provide the history that is needed. Flawed, distorted, and incomplete, history is exactly the way it should be.
Sources:
The Future We Deserve, by Jacques Barzun
Major Religions of the World, http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html