Tag: history

The Art of Un-Reading: Why We Must Question the History We Inherited

Paulo Freire once nailed it: true literacy isn’t just about reading the word, but reading the world. That means looking beyond the text and into the systems, the power plays, and the hidden agendas that manufactured that text in the first place.

And let’s be honest, this kind of intellectual excavation is most urgently required when we crack open the accounts we lazily call “history.”

The Lies We All Agreed Upon

Napoleon Bonaparte famously declared, “History is a set of lies agreed upon.”

It sounds like a cynical, high-level tweet. But the more you sit with it, the more ominous it becomes. Because when the folks with power write history, they aren’t writing a mirror for you to learn from. They’re writing a memoir—a meticulously edited, self-flattering, career-justifying memoir.

Napoleon proved this point on St. Helena, where he spent his final years mythologizing himself as a tragic hero, a visionary crushed by global fear. And the world? We just shrugged and accepted it. His version became the nation’s framework, and his self-portrait was adopted as their identity.

This is where Freire’s warning hits hardest.

When we inherit a compromised story, the lie becomes the foundation. We stop seeing history as a record and start treating it like a ghost map—a map drawn by the conqueror that shows only the boundaries they want you to respect, not the messy reality of the land itself.

The Problem With Hand-Me-Down Propaganda

The real punch in Napoleon’s quote isn’t that he lied, but that we collectively agreed to call it the truth.

History filtered through the powerful is a subtle, pervasive tool for control. When people—especially those historically marginalized—inherit the tales written by their oppressors, they unconsciously absorb the worldview that justifies their own limited position. They grow up unable to tell the difference between objective patriotism and high-budget propaganda.

If the history we start with is distorted, the lesson we pull from it is corrupted. And if the lesson is corrupted, the future we build is structurally flawed. This is precisely why entire societies keep repeating the same spectacular failures, just in trendier outfits. When the story is broken, the cycle is inevitable.

My own obsession with memory and truth comes from this very tension. Memory is always edited. Identity is always curated. History is always a negotiation. A nation remembers what makes it look good and conveniently forgets what makes it accountable. And wherever collective memory has a blind spot, future generations are left carrying inherited delusions as if they were established facts.

We Owe Honesty to the Future

Freire argued that liberation starts with critical consciousness—the willingness to question every tale, to unlearn every inherited illusion, and to “read the world” beneath the tidy surface. If we don’t do this work, we aren’t remembering history; we’re just running the script again.

The main imperative, then, isn’t to track down the elusive, perfect historical truth—that ship probably sailed—but to rigorously commit to the truth right here, in the present moment.

We don’t owe perfect clarity to the past. We owe honesty to the future.

If our children are going to build a smarter world, they can’t use our myths as blueprints. They deserve analytical clarity, not heroic self-narratives. They deserve a history that isn’t afraid to name its own shortcomings.

To “read the word and the world” is to hold both warnings at once: the stories we agree upon shape our societies, and only a commitment to truth keeps us from reliving the cycles we pretend we’ve outgrown.

Let’s commit to leaving behind fewer lies than we inherited. Only then will the next generation read the world not as it was edited for them, but as it actually is.

Lighthouses

You’ve probably seen a lighthouse before—a tall, solitary tower standing against the sea, its beacon cutting through the darkness. Once an essential guide for sailors navigating treacherous waters, most lighthouses now stand as relics of the past, their purpose fading into history, repurposed as tourist attractions. But once upon a time, they were lifelines—warning ships of hidden dangers, guiding them safely through perilous shallows and rocky shores, ensuring they found their way home.

Of course, in keeping with my tendency to explore duality, there’s another side to this story. Lighthouses, while symbols of safety, have also been at the mercy of violent storms, crushing waves, and shifting ice. Some, ironically, became the very obstacles they were meant to prevent, with ships crashing into them in heavy fog. The lighthouse keepers, isolated from the world, braved relentless weather, exhaustion, and wartime attacks, sometimes risking their own lives to rescue those lost at sea. And then there was the slow, creeping madness—the loneliness of a job that required them to keep the light burning even when no one was watching. Many keepers succumbed to isolation, some to tragedy, others to insanity.

A lighthouse’s beam, magnified by mirrors and lenses, can stretch up to 20 nautical miles (37 km), its reach extending far beyond what the eye can see. But what good is a lighthouse if its light goes out?

I suppose some of us are lighthouses for the beloved ships in our lives—standing steadfast, illuminating their way, ensuring they find safe passage through the storms. We watch from a distance, unwavering, asking for nothing in return. But even lighthouses have limits. A beacon can only shine for so long before the flame flickers, before the isolation erodes the foundation.

Perhaps, just perhaps, some ships were never meant to keep sailing. Maybe they, too, long for a place to rest—for a shore to call home. Because even a lighthouse, for all its strength, was never meant to stand alone. And maybe, just maybe, the light shines brightest when it’s not just guiding others but warming something within itself.

So if you are a lighthouse—and let’s be honest, we all are in some way—take care of yourself. Keep your light steady, not just for those who seek it, but for yourself, so when the storms come, you’re still standing, still shining, ready to guide the ones who need you most.