The Bowl, The Ram And The Folded Map: Navigating The Complicated World, a blog 
post at Elodie Under Glass, clearly and logically delineates how ‘what everybody knows’ is, in fact, false… Elodie generally writes about “Science, Feminism and the Media” and in this post parses the myths of society (e.g. there were no people of color in medieval England, Jesus was white/English/spoke English), the fairy tales of education and popular knowledge (“why people still insist that evolutionary biology underlies gender theory”), and how this creates a loop of inaccurate ‘knowledge’ and why “there is a certain type of historical accuracy that only makes sense if it matches a historically inaccurate picture of the world.”
[text inside the above “quotes” from Elodie Under Glass’s post “The Bowl, The Ram And the Folded Map”.]
A favorite topic of mine–history as construct. We must ask who created the text we are consuming, with what research do they substantiate their stories, and why. Because history books were written by someone. A group of people, actually. History is a story like any other: the author(s) write(s) with an audience in mind; these authors have their own worldview, their own prejudices and stories about “how the world is” (yes, this includes me); certain data are chosen while others are ignored; words are chosen to describe events; events are chosen to be written about while others are ignored. A “battle” may also be called an “insurrection” or a “coup” resulting in a “slaughter” or a “glorious victory” depending on what the author wishes to make you, the reader, feel about this particular construction of history. Nowhere in the air above a battlefield in flaming letters are the words “this is a fight for freedom” or “this is an atrocity.” And in which language would those words have been written anyway?
What stories do you tell yourself? Do they help you get through the day? Do they ever hinder you or your understanding of the world and others? How often do you re-evaluate your stories to see if they hold true, if they are helpful, if they are harmful?
s grow! I mean, it’s amazing. 
