Last short essay

A WELL KNOWN FICTION: HIS “STORY”

            Throughout the ages, human beings try to solve problems between nations. There is no any age or era without any destruction, war, mass death and all other bad things, adjectives and adverbs. There has been no any day without murdering, stealing and killing people for the sake of “goodness” of some people. Past and history are recordings of what happened in the previous days. There is a famous motto, which is “history is written by the victors.” For me, this is absolutely correct.

            Thomas Hobbes uttered those magical words: “Homo Homini Lupus”. A man is wolf to another man. That is, a man means a hunter to another one. This statement is a good detection. While reading it, it should be paid attention for how the words were chosen. There is no any word such as pigeon or other animals or things that symbolize peace or ease. Therefore, Hobbes made a good summarization of what human beings have done on this planet and history is the first hand witness which can be also considered as a “fiction.” If a work is fiction, then it can said that it is imaginary. Apart from this, understanding what is past and history is not so simple. In order to figure out the past and events occurred in history, all dynamics, things, characters, outcomes, consequences, reasons and other important things must be collected and evaluated together. History means the relationships between reasons and results of past events. Understanding the past has two dimensions. The first kind of past is our personal history while other is the collective conscious which is the history we all know.

            Apart from the fact that all things mentioned above, at the beginning of human civilization, small tribes came together and then first nations and states emerged. All these figures had their own ambitions and there were some driving and determinant factors that directed them. Religion, personal ambitions, national goals and regional objectives were important figures in shaping the history of man. There were numerous wars and conflicts, wrath and cruelty in the history, which was celebrated by thousands of people in history. When we look at today’s world, which is considered as the age of technology, human rights, tolerance, science and democracy, it can be seen that the nature of man has not experienced any change. Wars, conflicts, national and regional objectives, personal ambitious and wrath are continuing to exist. There is no any peace and tranquility in any part of the world. There are many countries who are hostiles to each other. Numerous nuclear bombs exist in numerous unknown parts of world. In the last century, about 100 million people died in conflicts and this century was called as “intellectual era”. It was an era of technology, intellectual, information, philosophy and art century. However, there had been no any era which included such kind of death toll and these were humans.

            When it comes to current situation of Western civilization for 21th century, there is nothing which has changed. We entered the new century with the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq by the greatest military and economic power of the world, which is advertised as the country of freedom. For the sake of freedom and democracy, people were killed. People were freed from this life. New technologies have been introduced into our lives however, people is not able to reach a high humanism. Ideologies, national ambitions and other factors stated above are still valid for barbarism, murdering, mass destruction and exploitation. All of these are recorded into the books and all of these will become history. Generations of future will read about them and while we can’t understand the reasons and results of some incidents that occur in our own age, the future generations will also have difficulty in reading them correctly, too. As civilized men, we have not been able to take some lessons from the past. We have not been able to read from the past in order to prevent new destruction, however, we have failed. If I were able to travel in time, I would go into past and make people sign a common declaration for “not killing” people. Taking life of a man is the worst thing in this world. Past could be recorded again with that declaration. Children of Nagasaki and Hiroshima could be living now as grandmothers and grandfathers. However, no, there is nobody affected by those nuclear bombs living now. They are dead. History, past and all values that are supposed to make us “more civilized” are dead now. As stated in the death of Lady Macbeth’s death, this life, and world is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.