Whose History?

"At bottom . . . we are faced with an alternative: either we suppose a real that is entirely permeable to history (to meaning, to the idea, to interpretation, to decision) and we ideologize or, by contrast, we suppose a real that is ultimately impenetrable and irreducible and in that case we poetize."

-Jean Baudrillard, from the intelligence of evil of the lucidity pact

I wasn't sure where to put this post, originally - it could have gone to the Surrational Rhetoric page and been about the fictionalization of an already fictional real recognized as such (the latter part of the quote from Baudrillard), or it could be here. So here it is, and as a result it will have more to do with ideology.

Things happen. Whether or not they are worth remembering is another matter altogether - an importance we imbue on them, conciously or otherwise. For instance: the life of a tree. Not really worth remembering, apart from the oxygen it provides for us to breath. But why not? It is part of the human condition in contemporary times that we imagine ourselves as apart - individual, atomized - as individuals, as cultures, as a species. Parallel to the idea of individuality, then, another one becomes pressing: that of identity. Without the notion of identity, there would be no way to speak about individuals since identity allows for a difference to be posited.

So we have histories. We have individual life histories, the histories of countries, the histories of cultures and subcultures, the history of the planet, of the solar system, of the galaxy, of the universe itself. Why do we have all this? Simply put: to figure out who the fuck we are. Then there are those who would like to tell us just that, and this is ideology. The mass media has for a long time had a large hand in manipulating minds, creating ideology by controlling history - or the portrayal of it - as it happens. With the explosion of internet usage this manipulation has slowed, or declined, or something - but I won't make any judgments on the actual value or what-have-you of the internet, since I'm still making up my mind.

-the ambassador