The questionable mirror refection of the arts in many forms, most notably novels, films, and television does one thing brilliantly – revisionist history. I’m not just talking about the obvious blurring of the lines between fact and fiction, the fanciful being more palatable than the hum drum of verbatim historical reference. It comes to my attention that some kind of morality can’t help but creep into the annals of history when characters are created and situations imagined from the point of view of the modern.
Lay aside for a moment the historical truth, too often being a casualty of many historical storylines for the sake of sensationalism. The deep seeded falsehood of modern morality is unfortunately kneaded into the very fabric of historical fictional and nonfictional works that transplant the sliding scale of moral decay into the purity of a past society not yet riddled with the crudity of nature and vulgarity of the familiar.
Our present culture is so jaded and corrupted by a sliding slippery slope of vanities in a “let it all hang out” mentality, we would be incapable of honestly representing the value system of generations past without intense due research. More importantly, much needed soul searching is warranted to capture the vitality of those long committed to the grave who might just have something to offer.
Of course, putting the proverbial genie back in the bottle is oh so problematic, but must we continue to misrepresent our heritage, not unlike the spiritual umbilical cord being cut prematurely from humanity that never seems to learn from the error of our ways and is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past without benefit of the awareness of the richness of the cornerstone of a now broken moral system decayed from misuse, abuse, and abandonment.
Indeed, we are our own worst enemy and the powers that be who have the most potent creative platforms seem to be living a two dimensional existence in a three dimensional universe when it comes to the depths yet unexplored in a God based value system that must be built from the bottom up individually as opposed to a universalist humanism, chiding the personal testimony in relationship of the one over the common experience of the misguided and troubled many.
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