How to separate what is true from what is not?
Given our history of endemic racism and "might is right," many of the cultural narratives we accept without question leave gaping holes about what really happened. The victor writes the history and puts themselves in good light.
I recently saw a post shared on a friend's social media account about the origins of Thanksgiving. It was meant to provoke. It prompted me to do a search for the "facts." I know the story well of Squanto and the pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620. He saved their lives by teaching them how to plant and giving them seed or they would have starved. They repaid him with Thanksgiving. Do I have it wrong?
How do we separate the wheat (truth) from the chaff (falsehood)?
Winnowing is tossing the mix into the air and letting the wind carry the chaff away, leaving the grain. Let's toss these stories into the air and let the wind carry away the false ones. Success at the cost of entire peoples peppers human history and prehistory. Might is right ruled the land until we could become ethical creatures. Beings who could walk in another man's shoes.
How do you determine which stories are true and which are not?
Painting by Jean-Francois Millet