| There is not one culture in the History of the World that does not conceal some hidden horror, some skeletons in the closet. How many bad apples on the family tree have shook up the foundation of faith in our past?
When you're young, they teach you about Christopher Columbus and all those other historical figures and instill in you a great sense of pride and patriotism and all that stuff.
Then you get a little older and they tell you more about slavery and hate and corruption. A sinking feeling begins to form in your stomach and your faith begins to dwindle, funneling slowly and surely out of that bright foundation you once laid for it.
Then there's the inevitable search for heroes and role models and Gods and as you come up empty-handed again and again the weight of history begins to press down on you, heavier. Sometimes you can forget, put it to the back of your mind, but the impossible pain of history remains.
There are, of course, real heroes and good people in history. But sometimes you have to wonder whether or not they did any good, they seem so outweighed and outgunned by their opposition.
Which is why the pain of our history seems so impossible to overcome.
(The phrase this node was built on comes from a line in the Ani DiFranco song, Fuel) | 
