I think i have said it before on this site, but I have a theory that you are constantly telling yourself a story about your past, about what is happening in the present and what you expect your future to be.

The Don Juan books are ALL about this very thing. See: erasing personal history. We’ve talked about this many times, but it’s another thing entirely for one to start actively living this way. It’s both disorienting and liberating.

And people revise this story all of the time. It’s like a meta program that we all run, keeps us moivated, gives us direction, shit like that.

Well put! And it’s extremely important because (1) we can make that story be anything, (2) we can work together to make agreements and exchanges about how it works, (3) revise and update on the fly when we find out things don’t work as they should, etc etc

History is just the collective version of this, the culture is always telling itself a narrative about its past, its present direction and it’s future.

History doesn’t just come from nowhere though. It comes from historians, story-tellers, singers, actors, etc. More on this vis a vis my carnival culture series: that’s where it is headed!

I think i have said it before on this site, but I have a theory that you are constantly telling yourself a story about your past, about what is happening in the present and what you expect your future to be.

And people revise this story all of the time. It’s like a meta program that we all run, keeps us moivated, gives us direction, shit like that.

History is just the collective version of this, the culture is always telling itself a narrative about its past, its present direction and it’s future.

Oh yeah, and that other bit of wisdom “History is always told by the winning side”

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A wise man taught me at school that the only history that really matters is what is termed ‘primary evidence’ - essentially, objects from the time under study. Anything written about the past later on is ’secondary evidence’ and is a very poor substitute. Most evidence about the past is secondary.

Everything on the internet is secondary.

Have you revised your own history consciously? The last part of your post makes me feel that you speak from experience. I’ve thought about that undertaking at times.

Well the point is sort of that everybody is constantly doing that at every second…? You’re doing it right now, I guarantee it.

{See also: Alan Watts, Wisdom of Insecurity}

http://cadeveo.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/vicarious-memories/

You’re right, though. All memories have an imaginationary (new word!) quality to them.

Have you revised your own history consciously? The last part of your post makes me feel that you speak from experience. I’ve thought about that undertaking at times.

L. Ron Hubbard certainly revised his history to come into line with who he thought he was or wanted to be. Same with Richard Bandler, the NLP co-founder…’course, their results aren’t necessarily reflective of those of other “users” of the personal history revisioning cream. Those two examples are pretty loaded, I realize.