Sure, we don't need to preserve every single piece of scrap in our collective memory. But archiving doesn't do that either. There are many more silent films ar

Sure, we don't need to preserve every single piece of scrap in our collective memory. But archiving doesn't do that either. There are many more silent films archived than either of us have watched, for example. Then sure, not everything needs to be archived. I believe there's a reasonable, subjective threshold of what you'd need to keep to get an idea of a person living in the time period. Letting go and keeping are not incompatible ideas.