[ Having devoted so many posts to it already, I might as well stick to this week's "opinion" theme in my last post of the week. ]
My recent rant about "reprehensible reporting" reminded me of my studies into the history of the Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade and "Saint" Dominic. And that reminded me of a resource that I had used earlier in my research: The Catholic Encyclopedia. Some years ago, back in Santa Fe, I had occasion to look up the three subjects above, and was shocked to find what the official encyclopedia of the Catholic Church had to say about them. In each entry they were "toeing the Party Line." There was a brief, two-line description of the Cathars that included no mention of the fact that the Catholic Church created one Crusade and the Inquisition to "deal with them," and as a result exterminated a possible quarter of a million fellow Christians. There was a somewhat longer entry for the Albigensian Crusade, again portraying the victims of that Crusade as "heretics" who were "dealt with swiftly" and after that ceased to be a problem to the Church. The entry on "Saint" Dominic failed to mention that he had been one of the forces that created the Inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade to exterminate the Cathars and that he was a certifiable lunatic. Curious, I just went back to the online version of the Catholic Encyclopedia today, to see if they had updated these entries. They have. There are no entries for any of the three subjects. One cannot find an entry for the Cathars, for the Albigensian Crusade, or (and most interesting) "Saint" Dominic, founder of the Inquisition and the Dominican Order. Go figure. Thus the title in the Subject line: "History is written by the winners." The Catholic Church "won." And their "history" in the last eight centuries has been to downplay the real events of the 12th and 13th centuries and portray them in the most favorable light possible. Now, in the 21st century, their approach seems to be to pretend that these events *never happened*. That is one of the reasons I like Fairfield Life. Someday, someone is going to write the history of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the TM movement. If it fails in its goals, that history is going to be written by people who characterize Maharishi and those who followed him blindly as well-meaning but ineffectual fools. If it succeeds in its goals, and someday everyone really is levitating and living in a world of peace and prosperity, that history is going to characterize all of the True Believers as saints, and all of the critics as heretics and deluded fools who missed the boat. And one of these stories will become "history." At that point, if the Internet still exists and an archive of Fairfield Life still exists, that may be one of the only places where people of that future time can go to see BOTH SIDES OF THE STORY. They won't have to read the "history" written by the "winners," whoever they turn out to be. They can read the day-by-day discussions here and DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES what the "story" was. And -- however it all turns out -- I think that's a pretty neat thing, and that Rick should be praised for having created a kind of "living history" that will preserve both sides, despite the eventual efforts of the "winners" to preserve only one of them.
