Categories: uncategorized
Date: 08 September 2005 20:57:03
I am working my way through Soil and Soul by Alastair McIntosh at the moment.
I'm only a third of the way through, yet already I have learnt loads from it, particularly about the internal colonialisation of the UKs own indigenous peoples during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Most interestingly though, it has shown how over the years it has been "useful" for those incharge to supress particularly histories and stories, particulalry through encouraging a culture of silence and "forgetting". This is something I have increasingly picked up over the last few months on my travels and in my reading of various books (see my August postings on interesting historical figures for a few examples).
McIntosh eloquently sums it up & the feelings that you get when you rediscover these histories, that you feel have been hidden from you. He says:
"History gets pushed aside as 'just something from the old days'. A culture of silence takes hold, and that silence is, of course, the voice of complicity; the voice of all of us who are afraid to stir from the spell of what Professor Donald Meek calls 'heavy does of cultural anaesthesia...to blot out the hardships of the past.'
It as if memory itself has fallen into a deep pool of forgetfulnes, and somebody has put up a sign that says 'NO FISHING'. And I'm feeling puzzled and angry, and I'm wondering how the hell that order was enforced." (p.95)