4 ms·

Did a whole generation really just "march off to war to put their lives on the line"? While of course there were people who volunteered, in the USA the majority

Did a whole generation really just "march off to war to put their lives on the line"? While of course there were people who volunteered, in the USA the majority of soldiers fighting in World War II were conscripted – they went because the state told them they had to go. And there was still a lot of isolationist sentiment and reluctance to get involved in the war in Europe even after Pearl Harbor. Are the figures not similar for Canada?

magicsmoke 6y ago
It doesn't matter, because history is probably one of the most effective forms of social control. Think about how complicated modern day events are and how difficult it is to shift through the mountains of perspectives to understand the whole picture. Now throw in decades of time difference with fragmented and hard to decipher primary documents, and you end up with a story that has to be interpreted by expert historians/storytellers, installed into the self-identity of generations of students, and used to shame individuals into matching the mythical sacrifices their ancestors supposedly took without any complaint. It's miles ahead of organized religion in terms of persuasiveness because any grain of truth in the historical story is magnified into the only possible truth without nuance or uncertainty. To go against the stories we tell ourselves is to go against all of society itself. If the body tells you to die in stomach acid because that is your role as an epithelium cell, and it's what generations of your ancestors have done, what can you do but die doing your job? There was a point where I really enjoyed reading histories. Then I dug too deep and found too many inconsistencies, and I realized that if I were to track down every detail to the end I would go mad or worse, be a history PhD. The only way I could recover that original enjoyment was to treat every historical book as a work of fiction and marvel at how well they're able to hack its way into the social subsystem in our brain that allows us to form societies.
908B64B197 6y ago
The war was pitched in Canada as "a duty to defend England, the throne and the motherland". This did not sit well with French Canadians, who inhabited the country since the 1500's and were heavily discriminated against by the British[0][1]. Still that didn't stop heroes like Léo Major[3] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_the_Parliament_Buildings_in_Montreal#:~:text=The%20burning%20of%20the%20Parliament%20Buildings%20in%20Montreal,1849%2C%20in%20Montreal%20in%20the%20Province%20of%20Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_the_Parliament_Buil.... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians#:~:text=The%20Expulsion%20of%20the%20Acadians%2C%20also%20known%20as,Acadia%2C%20causing%20the%20death%20of%20thousands%20of%20people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians#:~:t.... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9o_Major https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9o_Major

magicsmoke 6y ago

It doesn't matter, because history is probably one of the most effective forms of social control. Think about how complicated modern day events are and how difficult it is to shift through the mountains of perspectives to understand the whole picture. Now throw in decades of time difference with fragmented and hard to decipher primary documents, and you end up with a story that has to be interpreted by expert historians/storytellers, installed into the self-identity of generations of students, and used to shame individuals into matching the mythical sacrifices their ancestors supposedly took without any complaint. It's miles ahead of organized religion in terms of persuasiveness because any grain of truth in the historical story is magnified into the only possible truth without nuance or uncertainty. To go against the stories we tell ourselves is to go against all of society itself. If the body tells you to die in stomach acid because that is your role as an epithelium cell, and it's what generations of your ancestors have done, what can you do but die doing your job? There was a point where I really enjoyed reading histories. Then I dug too deep and found too many inconsistencies, and I realized that if I were to track down every detail to the end I would go mad or worse, be a history PhD. The only way I could recover that original enjoyment was to treat every historical book as a work of fiction and marvel at how well they're able to hack its way into the social subsystem in our brain that allows us to form societies.

908B64B197 6y ago

The war was pitched in Canada as "a duty to defend England, the throne and the motherland". This did not sit well with French Canadians, who inhabited the country since the 1500's and were heavily discriminated against by the British[0][1]. Still that didn't stop heroes like Léo Major[3] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_the_Parliament_Buildings_in_Montreal#:~:text=The%20burning%20of%20the%20Parliament%20Buildings%20in%20Montreal,1849%2C%20in%20Montreal%20in%20the%20Province%20of%20Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_the_Parliament_Buil.... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians#:~:text=The%20Expulsion%20of%20the%20Acadians%2C%20also%20known%20as,Acadia%2C%20causing%20the%20death%20of%20thousands%20of%20people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians#:~:t.... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9o_Major https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9o_Major