Perceptions of reality changed the course of history

Where did the energy for this lightbulb moment come from

As I'm currently learning how to become an English teacher and one of my assignments is to prepare a lesson plan for a class, using both English and subject matter.

The assignment offers three options and as a sucker for historic facts, I chose a class about the Bourbon family.

No, it isn't about the drink, but a part of European history that South Africans generally aren't that familiar with. Naturally, I had to jump onto YouTube to research the concept, which normally leads my curiosity to end in more questions than answers.

Without digging into European History too much, the most interesting fact that cleared many confusing suspicions was that Francia was the country/ region that existed before there were separate countries. They were ruled by one Monarc called CHARLAMAINE. It explained the following.

Previously awkward history now explained by the new information

• Why so many historical royals were kind of one family

• Why French is such an important language in Europe, expanding much wider than the country

• How distant families were able to see nothing wrong with killing a distant cousin to gain an empire. We certainly don't feel so strong about anything to kill a brother.

Where my curios mind explored after the new information

So the history lesson taught me a little about European history and where it all started. Combining the new information with the fragments I already stored away, I realised that no matter who the monarchy was, people always had wars going on to entertain them. Maybe it sounds blunt because I've never been fighting in a war, nor was I living in the 18th century, but it seems to me that before Charlamaine, people fought for land and survival.

With the rising dominance of Christianity, people merely found another reason to wage war on one another. Now, inside Christianity, there are thousands of versions of the same faith, each with a little distinction from the others. Back then, they had the Protestants and the Catholics. We, Afrikaans-speaking South Africans all know a little about the Catholics since most of us were raised in something similar to the Methodist Church, called the Dutch Reformed Church.

The question forming in the back of my mind was, what's the significant difference between Catholic and Protestant faiths that elicited such unrest during the middle ages? We expect to find that people were enthusiastically fighting against brothers to eradicate earth from an unknown evil.

We know that people have differences in opinions, and we respectfully agree to disagree on some things, but we won't wage war unless something threatens our existence.

Moment of Clarity

I almost came to the conclusion that Christianity caused more unrest while preaching peace during the centuries of its existence. Psychologically, I think now that it was merely another half-hearted reason people explained their reasons for war. They had a thirst for violence, couldn't get along, and were bored with struggling without internet, so they started fighting.

I can imagine two guys starting a fight with an expanding number of people joining the fight. Halfway through, someone asks, "this is fun an all, but what are we fighting about?" Another person would answer, "let's say it's because they're Protestants/ Catholics...whatever. You wanna go home or what?"

I came to this thought after my search for an answer to my question, "HOW IMPORTANT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PROTESTANTS AND CATHOLICS THAT COULD LEAD TO SO MUCH UNREST." The answer is that the differences are minor. It makes one come to another form of the same conclusion that the reality we live in is much different than the one we perceive as reality. Maybe reality changes as communication changes.

If you want, brush up here on the differences between Catholic and Protestant faiths

I'm convinced that the 100-year war would have been sorted out in a few days if they had a social media platform where they were told that they were fighting about something stupid. I believe that as they made history, they knew that something important to them was happening at the time, but their reality bubble made them think that it is something isolated from the world. How much of that train of thought do you think still resides in the minds of influential people today? It is easy to look back at their mistakes and judge, but they didn't have the communication methods to research possible outcomes for their actions.

What we can learn from this

Without a doubt,, we think we could have done a better job. Things would have turned out much differently if the world didn't fight about petty things. Even the other day, the Americans fought because they were humiliated on their home turf. Obviously, there were many things happening behind the scenes which weren't publicised as what we saw on the news, but that is because we feel that emotions aren't as important as our actions.

Media is also polarised depending on who tells the story, which is fundamentally a lie-broadcasting industry. That is the communication of reality we have right now, which is much better than what they had in the middle ages, but what about the future? What would the world look like if there were murky realities of what is actually happening? What if we knew exactly why there was a problem and in which circumstances did people came to the conclusion to follow a certain type of action.

Our future generations will probably look back and laugh at our stupidity and wonder why we even considered taking one-sided information seriously