A new History…

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There are two ways of understanding the world, the role of man on earth: the Western culture, which takes a secular and profane speech, prioritizes unique aspects of history and classifies them into a linearity that leads us to believe in evolution (of course, every time we are better), in a logical consistency of events where everything has a cause and effect. Time change marks periodization and the times, space is rationalized and departments, create a phrase relationship between man and all that surrounds it, is what has been called the logical discurse.

By contrast, non-Western cultures present and past are based on the paradigm, and that from a religious discourse, sacred or mythical, based on repetition of archetypes and rituals that refer to a primeval time, integrate all earthly creatures and all their actions, in a cosmic balance. Everything points to divine models, and consistency is vital not over but in the virtual system of relationships, where the role of the mediator (king, chief of the tribe, Pharaoh …) between the divine and earthly plays an essential role when maintaining order. The time always refers to the tradition and permanence, and the cosmic archetype space, becoming transcendent. This is the mythical discurse.

This bipolarity makes history heritage of logical discourse is that the structure and rates, and that paradoxically mythical civilizations deny it in favor of repetition, the “eternal return”. If we add all the traditional prevalence of Western thought, see how history has been written from a Eurocentric point of view mainly by imposing their theories, methods and structures in the explanation of other cultures.

The diversity of cultures has a dynamic character, every culture is in contact with other cultures, contemporary or not, native or far, and what really matters is the relationship established between them. Therefore, it is still unfair to only give validity to what fits into our western standards and do not recognize the other. It has to design a truly valid practice for the analysis of otherness, based on cultural relativism (all cultures are worthy of consideration as such) and the end of colonizer role of Western culture. Our duty is to write a history of humanity renewed. Levi-Strauss says that “the recognition of otherness and cultural diversity of cultural forms and processes qualitatively different from the West, and the relativization of the role of West in the History of Mankind involve (…) a ‘New History’. “[1] This is the humanist challenge of tomorrow: rewriting the history of mankind, but care and taking into account what Ortega y Gasset:” Truth is not relative to men, but the number and kinds of truths that can possess. ” [2]

[1] Levi-Strauss, C. Race and History, Ed. 62, Barcelona, ​​1969.

[2] José Ortega y Gasset, Psychological Research, XIV, in: Collected Works, Ed. Alliance West magazine editorial, Madrid, 1983, t. XII, p. 442.