Words: 657 Reading time: 2 minute 12 seconds
It is a common piece of folklore that you cannot change the past. The result is that some people feel regret, sorrow, depressed and even traumatised by past events. Day after day they live with the past. It is constantly in their thoughts.
Other people feel committed or constrained by something either said or done many years ago. They feel that occasion etched in stone exactly who they are, what they can aspire to and how they live their lives. These people live in the past. They believe they cannot move beyond it.
For both of these groups the folklore is true. For them the past is unchanging. They preserve it, often at great personal cost, like some religious icon, or pagan totem. It’s a constant touchstone, a firm, dependable datum from which everything and everyone else is measured.
For everyone else it is perfectly possible to change the past, and we do so regularly.
Who of us has not “forgotten” some episode from our youth that we are reminded of uncomfortably, perhaps at a large family gathering?
Who can remember each moment of every day for just the last twelve months, never mind ten or twenty years back?
The events of those days may have happened, or they may have been imagined, but for us they are lost forever. For us there is no difference between our acting as if they didn’t take place and the event never happening at all. The result is the same.
The reverse of the medal is the creation of “false memories”. If a person comes to believe absolutely that certain things happened to them, then they begin to exhibit the same symptoms as those who actually experienced similar events – usually highly traumatic. The acquired “false memory” is as real as any other – the past has been changed.
Wartime, in particular, is replete with propaganda that deletes whole incidents, or creates a baseless reality.
The Katyn Forest massacre was written out of history for decades until it was finally confirmed in April 1990. Whether that confirmation will later be modified we cannot know.
The idea that eating carrots significantly improves night vision persists to this day. However, the tale was originally dreamed up by British propagandists to explain away the success of allied night fighters against German bombers that, in reality, depended on radar.
Re-interpretation also changes our past.
What we “know” of Roman Britain was written by the Romans. Modern archaeology is beginning to uncover finds that suggest things may not have been quite as the Romans depicted them. The past is changing.
In the past artists have been hailed for their great creativity and daring innovations. While not questioning their talents the sources of some of their idiosyncrasies are now being thrown into doubt.
Was El Greco's oblique elongation of his characters due to astigmatism?
Was Constable a colour-defective?
Was the Impressionist style of painting due to the myopia and cataracts of its leading components?
Are van Gogh's yellow and haloed paintings due to the ocular side effects of digitalis toxicity?
We are rewriting the story of how these things came into being. We are changing the past.
Religion is another area rich with alternative versions of the past. In the thirteenth century, in Christian areas of the world, the infallibility of the Pope was unquestioned. Today few believe those ancient pontiffs were without flaws.
If you are hooked into the idea that the past does not change and cannot now be changed, then perhaps it is time to think again. Even how we feel about events in the past can be changed by reframing the experiences in question:
* Re-cast failure as learning.
* See loss of a loved one as just the end of one chapter.
* Re-colour illness as a fork in the road.
The scope for changing the past is limited only by your own imagination. And the past says nothing about who you are today and the person you will become tomorrow.
It is a common piece of folklore that you cannot change the past. The result is that some people feel regret, sorrow, depressed and even traumatised by past events. Day after day they live with the past. It is constantly in their thoughts.
Other people feel committed or constrained by something either said or done many years ago. They feel that occasion etched in stone exactly who they are, what they can aspire to and how they live their lives. These people live in the past. They believe they cannot move beyond it.
For both of these groups the folklore is true. For them the past is unchanging. They preserve it, often at great personal cost, like some religious icon, or pagan totem. It’s a constant touchstone, a firm, dependable datum from which everything and everyone else is measured.
For everyone else it is perfectly possible to change the past, and we do so regularly.
Who of us has not “forgotten” some episode from our youth that we are reminded of uncomfortably, perhaps at a large family gathering?
Who can remember each moment of every day for just the last twelve months, never mind ten or twenty years back?
The events of those days may have happened, or they may have been imagined, but for us they are lost forever. For us there is no difference between our acting as if they didn’t take place and the event never happening at all. The result is the same.
The reverse of the medal is the creation of “false memories”. If a person comes to believe absolutely that certain things happened to them, then they begin to exhibit the same symptoms as those who actually experienced similar events – usually highly traumatic. The acquired “false memory” is as real as any other – the past has been changed.
Wartime, in particular, is replete with propaganda that deletes whole incidents, or creates a baseless reality.
The Katyn Forest massacre was written out of history for decades until it was finally confirmed in April 1990. Whether that confirmation will later be modified we cannot know.
The idea that eating carrots significantly improves night vision persists to this day. However, the tale was originally dreamed up by British propagandists to explain away the success of allied night fighters against German bombers that, in reality, depended on radar.
Re-interpretation also changes our past.
What we “know” of Roman Britain was written by the Romans. Modern archaeology is beginning to uncover finds that suggest things may not have been quite as the Romans depicted them. The past is changing.
In the past artists have been hailed for their great creativity and daring innovations. While not questioning their talents the sources of some of their idiosyncrasies are now being thrown into doubt.
Was El Greco's oblique elongation of his characters due to astigmatism?
Was Constable a colour-defective?
Was the Impressionist style of painting due to the myopia and cataracts of its leading components?
Are van Gogh's yellow and haloed paintings due to the ocular side effects of digitalis toxicity?
We are rewriting the story of how these things came into being. We are changing the past.
Religion is another area rich with alternative versions of the past. In the thirteenth century, in Christian areas of the world, the infallibility of the Pope was unquestioned. Today few believe those ancient pontiffs were without flaws.
If you are hooked into the idea that the past does not change and cannot now be changed, then perhaps it is time to think again. Even how we feel about events in the past can be changed by reframing the experiences in question:
* Re-cast failure as learning.
* See loss of a loved one as just the end of one chapter.
* Re-colour illness as a fork in the road.
The scope for changing the past is limited only by your own imagination. And the past says nothing about who you are today and the person you will become tomorrow.
