4 ms·
Forgetting is a double edged sword, but one needed for us to live in the present. Living in the future or the past is what really opens up for hatred and fear.
by isodude 8y ago
Forgetting is a double edged sword, but one needed for us to live in the present. Living in the future or the past is what really opens up for hatred and fear. Unless something acts as a reminder how bad it really was, it will become fairy tales eventually.. "it couldn't have been that bad right?". But it shouldn't hinder us for trying to make it better in the future.
Edit: It's up to us all to prove the author wrong, it makes me sad when I talk to people that try really hard to wrap everything in lies to make themselves feel better. Maybe the starting point that dooms is when parents/states tries to smooth over horrible events.
- philwelch 8y agoIt's hard to remember the lessons without remembering how we learned them, but it happens sometimes. The founding ideals of the modern world rose from the ashes of the Thirty Years War, and they stuck around pretty well even after that war passed from living memory. Sadly, the lessons learned from the 20th century didn't even seem to survive that long. If anything, the very ideas that the 20th century utterly discredited are poised to overturn even the Enlightenment.
- isodude 8y agoBack then we were relying on tales told from grandparents, or for that matter trades learnt from parents, it seems now that much i dissolved by mega industries or common databases/search indexes. Like we used to remember phone numbers but now it's not needed. Wikipedia can hold all the bad memories so we don't need to. From an energy conservation perspective it's great. But how far should we let it go?