We don't know our history

If you know anything of history--our history, anyone's history, really, the history of humans and humankind (I'm going to be "pc" here, live with it), you have to know that mankind has been built on the rich and wealthy--the very wealthy, frequently--taking advantage of and living on and because of, the poor and, frequently, the very poor.

If you study humankind's history, you will learn this.

Think of it--history as far back as we can go.

Go back to Egypt, Egyptians and the pyramids. Who do you think built those? We all know who did. The poor; slaves, likely.

If you've watched "The Tudors" on Showtime lately, you can see the wealthy--"Royalty"--living on and because of the poor, what we call "serfs". It still goes on today, as we all know.

Watch the series "We Shall Remain" on PBS and see if you don't see the materially and financially poor aborigines--Indigenous Americans--exploited and beaten down, killed, by people with more money and material goods.

If you've seen this other series, "Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People", you've seen how the poor were horribly expoited, again and again by corporations and the wealthy, frequently absentee owners.

Think of the Aborigines of Australia. It was the same situation. The financially poor, used, abused and thrown away by the newer, material society.

And we call that "success".

And yet we don't learn anything from this, either. We don't hold back the corporations; we don't keep the coal companies from their mountaintop removal; we don't conserve nature; we don't protect our waterways.

We don't learn that we don't need to have the wealthy continue to exploit all the rest of us, pollution or no pollution.

We don't learn.

I'll tell you, we'd better start. We'll all benefit from it.

Links:
http://www.wholeearth.com/issue/1120/book-review/270/night.comes.to.the.cumberlands
http://appalachiafilm.org/
http://www.sho.com/site/tudors/home.do