What historical event fascinates you the most?

I have a theory that is sadly all too often in acted out in today’s world.

Reflection upon history and cultural background is all too rare, being acknowledged and appreciated by too few people.

It often seems in our mad haste toward the future that regard for the past is evermore scant. In metaphoric terms we are in the car that is going ever faster and attractiveness with evermore intensity to peering through the windscreen as we drive headlong into the future. We never ever take time to brake, stop at the red light, and take time to glimpse into and reflect upon what is seen in the rearview mirror of our history.

It often seems to me as a person who does reflect upon the past, that in today’s world, there is today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, the next decade, Scores of future years, and beyond that the somewhat shrouded vista of the future.

It’s a case of being in today’s world, reflecting upon yesterday, and forgetting what happened before that because it has faded and become almost invisible within the realm of hindsight.

The only feature saving us all from total separation from the past are those occasional news columns that reflect upon “this day in history“. It’s surprising how much comes back of the past when perusing these columns.

And with those remembrances come reflections On what was done that was right, and things that might have been done differently and better. Sadly, reflections upon the past are very very rarely undertaken when the future is being planned.

So it is the past mistakes are oftener re-visited and returned as policy touted as new, when it is a revisitation of things in the past that were discarded for lack of positive outcome.

It seems that people in charge of organisations do not want to hear from those who preceded them. Any contribution from those who have “been there, done that” is unwelcome.

Historical events that are local, or from a wider vista of the past always interest me. In personal terms I sometimes reflect back through the awareness created by my diaries. I have kept a diary, with a few gaps here in there, since 1970.

They haven’t been many historical memories that I remember and it’s hard to come down to just one. However, if push comes to shove, I have to single out one thing in history

The thing that appeals to me the most, goes all the way back according to Holy Writ to Old Testament times. It has two parts.

The first part was that of God creating a flood of water that covered the whole world; it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and the world was cleansed.

The second part was that following the flood and in the years to come the people of the world decided that they would build a tower, the tower of Babel, that would reach up into the heavens. Should there be another flood the people of the world – given the dimensions of the tower of the Bible – could climb the tower and escape the flood.

The story in the Bible goes that God could not allow this to happen and so he sent it a confusion of tongues upon people so that they no longer all spoke the same language. That is where the multitude of languages and dialects that we have today came from.

Some people believe in the Bible and what is said scripturally while others don’t.

But these two manifestations stand out to me for their deep historic significance. And the multitude of languages we have on earth had to come from somewhere – just the same as Noah’s Ark being found centuries after the flood on Mount Ararat, I believe somewhere in Sinai.