Written by the Victors

In learning about history, one of my favorite things to do is dig up the little-known or "losing" side of the story. The story of the witches burned by the Inquisition, of the Spiritualists and atheists in the nineteenth century, of the Germans in WWII, of the unspoken and unsung.

That is not to say, of course, that the history written by the victors is unimportant. Or that written by the allies of the victims. But there are always more sides, more facets, to the gem of history than first appear visible to our biased gaze.

There aren't often true "villains" in history, people who truly just want to make others suffer. There is always some grain, some tiny glint of altruism or idealism that offsets the dirt and grime and corruption. Much as we hate to admit that people like Hitler, like bin Laden, have some sort of good, it is something that we should admit.

It is something we should admit not to justify their actions or excuse their cruelty, but to better understand ourselves and our own motivations. If we can see that they - the mysterious, proverbial "they" - have a modicum of goodness, then perhaps we can see that within what we see as our own virtue may be a kernel of darkness.