Power, Collective Narrative and Historical Memory

A lie can win the battle of narratives in minds prepared to accept lies, but it can neither create nor destroy truth.

The people’s collective memory has already delivered its final judgement, and history will be written accordingly. No matter how hard they try to construct another narrative, it is impossible for a narrative that is not the people’s narrative to remain within collective memory and history.

To place everything in the service of today is not short-sightedness. It is blindness to tomorrow and to the fundamental relationship between the durability of power and the judgement of collective memory.

Collective narratives determine the final destiny of collective memory, and collective memory is always the highest power shaping the destiny of a nation over time.

The failure of a power to shape the narrative that governs collective memory simply transforms that power into one bounded by history and time. It places a definitive full stop after the possibility of that power’s historical survival. In their brief moment of celebration, what do they know of the fact that what they purchased at the terrible price of so many lives was not power, but its ending?