I have a more cynical take that what exactly happened is less important than how we interpret what we believe to have happened. Perhaps there are historians tha

I have a more cynical take that what exactly happened is less important than how we interpret what we believe to have happened. Perhaps there are historians that are so objective as to be robotic in uncovering and disseminating only the facts, but I believe most historical studies are entangled with moral arguments. Firstly, even if we focus only on the facts, reality is so complex and multifaceted that it is inevitable a historian must selectively omit material in order to communicate a story a public can understand, and this inevitably obscures the facts and pulls in the historian's own moral interpretations of what is worth communicating. Secondly, although there may be people who study history for the love of uncovering past events without preconceptions or bias, they are funded by those that may not share the same goals. History is used to induce a sense of shared national identity in schoolchildren, demonize others to justify confrontation, and stir citizens into making personal sacrifices for the group. Even if all the events are true, how they are presented, interpreted, and selectively omitted can create wildly different opinions on the same historical event. Ultimately, I think history is more a tool of social control than any objective study. A person unmoored from history will focus only on his immediate wants and needs. A person with some education in history will call upon historical grudges and pride in the heroism of those long dead to take part in social structures that far exceeds him in numbers and lifespan. Storytelling is what makes us social animals, and history is just a more believable form of storytelling. What really happened isn't valuable in itself but how it adds to the persuasiveness of that story.