I seem to remember at school, I was interested in subjects such as history and science but I seem to think I didn't read or study it more thoroughly until later after finishing school and college in my early 20s. After I'd finished doing art and design, I found myself really into history, although I like to read about other subjects such as true crime, animals and natural history, mythology and sometimes fiction like horror and fantasy.
I remember coming across a book on 100 most influential persons in history and it inspired me to write something similar but about people who did bad and evil things in history, people including Hitler and the Nazis, other tyrants, serial killers, gangsters and so on. But one of the problems I did face was that some of the people I would choose for this list were probably not always as bad as we think they were because I was reading opposite views from other people about these figures especially from people who still ''admire'' them because they might have also done good things. Some of these figures include people like Stalin, Mao, Genghis Khan, who are still in their respective countries not as harshly judged than they maybe are here in the West whereas the Nazis are near-universally despised. I began to realise some of the stuff I was reading was possibly propaganda trying portray some people bad to make other people look good. One example was that the Spanish Inquisition was less cruel than other inquisitions in Europe and that what I had read about it before or some of the programmes I saw about it was from anti-catholic propagandists.
Its only been in recent years, that I realised history is very subjective and problematic so for a time I had to think about finding other subjects about but it hasn't stopped me reading it though. I seem to think I have read more about history and other subjects than maybe other people who went to university have done but I maybe wrong about that.
21 Feb 2024, 8:17 pm
