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A people cannot understand themselves without understanding their past. We not only become small-minded, parochial, and petty by forgetting our past. We forget

A people cannot understand themselves without understanding their past. We not only become small-minded, parochial, and petty by forgetting our past. We forget who we are. We become enslaved to passing fads and silly nonsense of the day instead of aiming for the eternal. We lose perspective and become pusillanimous, obsessed with ourselves while remaining ignorant of our place in the tapestry of time. By forgetting the received tradition, we forfeit a goldmine of wisdom developed and communicated over the ages that we, too, should embrace and develop. We exclude ourselves from a dialogue with our ancestors who have much to share with us, from whom we have much to learn, and whose efforts we should continue, refining, correcting, expanding, elaborating what came before. We should engage with the endoxa of the ages. That doesn't mean thoughtless acceptance of a calcified mass, but entering into relationship with a living inheritance with the requisite humility. We have chosen foolishness and mediocrity, and spiritual and intellectual poverty, savagery over humanity. And in our foolishness we cannot help but walk in circles, repeating the same errors, because we do not remember where we have already been. It is the story of modern philosophy which rhymes with and echoes the errors of the presocratic philosophers.

082349872349872 2y ago
If you're aiming for the eternal, a message board full of computer geeks may not be the best place to find it. Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm2h0cbvsw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm2h0cbvsw8
- nine_k 2y ago
  Computer industry moves so quickly that a number of good ideas was discovered, departed from, rediscovered, etc several times in the living memory.
_a_a_a_ 2y ago
> A people cannot understand themselves without understanding their past This kind of stuff gets rolled out regularly by arty and literary types but never with any explanation as to why it might be true, and I don't think it is. Care to indulge me?
- jpt4 2y ago
  If a person could unequivocally understand themselves without understanding their past, then the trivial understanding of mere knowledge of the past should have no impact on their current self-understanding capabilities. Thus, a person with ongoing amnesia, unable to form memories which extend beyond a day's context window, would have no disadvantage in terms of self-understanding.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    Further, history isn't just a series of events that happened long ago. It’s the story of how we - communities, nations, and civilizations have evolved over time. The experiences of previous generations shape the social, cultural, political, and economic structures that define a society today. Understanding this history allows a community to grasp why they are the way they are. For instance, the American Civil Rights Movement helps explain contemporary discussions on race in the United States. Without historical context, many aspects of the current social fabric would seem inexplicable or disconnected.- Collective memory, as Halbwachs would have it, is like the shared pool of information and experiences held by a group of people. This collective memory is essential for maintaining cultural continuity across generations. When a community loses touch with its history, it risks losing the cohesion that binds its members together, which can lead to a sort of cultural amnesia. This concept isn’t just for nations; it applies to any group with a shared identity, including religious communities, ethnic groups, and even professional organizations.- For example, indigenous communities often emphasize the importance of oral histories and traditions because these narratives carry the accumulated wisdom and identity of their people. If these stories are lost, so too is a sense of who they are as a distinct group.- An understanding of history also allows a community to make informed decisions about the future. When people understand the causes and consequences of past events, they are better equipped to navigate present challenges. Santayana's quote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," might sound like a cliché, but it's rooted in the idea that historical awareness helps societies avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. The European Union, for instance, was built on the memory of two world wars, which profoundly influenced its emphasis on cooperation and integration to prevent similar outcomes. Notwithstanding this whole mess in Ukraine ...
Earw0rm 2y ago
I'm not here to accuse you of racism. This isn't X. But there are some words here which require closer examination. "A people".. "themselves".. "we".. "our past". Who, exactly, gets to draw the boundary line around a people, or determine finally and canonically how "the" story of "our" past should be told? To whose ancient philosophers, priests and spiritual leaders should we look for wisdom? This is not to say that stories of the past have no value, but which ones are mine and which are yours, and whose record of past events is the most accurate or conveys the most wisdom, that's much harder to say. Signed, a UK citizen who is and forever will be pissed off with Brexit, not principally because of the needless economic damage or the lives uprooted, but because someone else decided to cast me as part of a "we" I never asked nor wanted to be part of.
- sjducb 2y ago
  But views and norms are shared within a country and you can make accurate predictions about people based on their race, country of birth and country where they grew up. - A white person from Sweden is likely to be pro choice by American standards. (95% chance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Sweden#:~:text=A%202024%20report%20by%20Pew,well%20as%20other%20abortion%20rights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Sweden#:~:text=A.... ) - An Egyptian is likely to think that FGM is normal and a good thing. (Over 85% https://egypt.unfpa.org/en/topics/female-genital-mutilation-5#:~:text=FGM%20in%20Egypt&text=According%20to%20the%20Egyptian%20Family,percent%20of%20whom%20by%20doctors https://egypt.unfpa.org/en/topics/female-genital-mutilation-.... ) - A Lebanese person will probably have antisemitic views (Over 85% chance https://global100.adl.org/country/lebanon/2014 https://global100.adl.org/country/lebanon/2014) I recently went to a wedding. Who got drunk and started a fight? Was it the only Irishman? I would predict that a white British person thinks that gun ownership should be restricted to military and police. A Swiss person will think that everyone should be given a rifle by the government. (Over 95 percent of Swiss households have a fully automatic rifle) You can group people by ethnicity and nationality, then observe big differences between the groups.
  - Earw0rm 2y ago
    Nationality? Certainly. Race / ethnicity? With extreme caution. Most Black people in the US have enough of a shared history that it's a useful label, for example. But Ghana, Eritrea and Eswatini share almost none, even if their people might be superficially lumped together as ethnically Black African. But even if you can successfully draw a boundary around a people (Brits? White Brits? And that's before we even get into the whole Welsh-English-Scots thing), which stories do we tell? And how do we update them as - for example - it has become more and more apparent that Britain's relative prosperity during the 18th & 19th centuries was largely at the expense of conquered peoples and Empire territories - many of whose descendants (Indian, Irish, Jamaican or Ghanaian) are now an integral part of society here? How do we avoid crude re-tellings of WW2 where the Nazis are cast as certain and irredeemable baddies from the beginning, when the greatest of their atrocities - the one that marked them out forever as a greater monster than any of the Western allies, who had a far from unblemished record - wasn't actually known to our leaders until very late on in the war, by which time the Nazis were facing almost certain defeat? (I'm not saying, to be clear, that the Nazis were anything other than utterly evil - but up until the scale and nature of the Holocaust became apparent, the story did not resolve so cleanly into "good vs evil" as the way it's commonly told today).

082349872349872 2y ago

If you're aiming for the eternal, a message board full of computer geeks may not be the best place to find it. Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm2h0cbvsw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm2h0cbvsw8

nine_k 2y ago
Computer industry moves so quickly that a number of good ideas was discovered, departed from, rediscovered, etc several times in the living memory.

_a_a_a_ 2y ago

> A people cannot understand themselves without understanding their past This kind of stuff gets rolled out regularly by arty and literary types but never with any explanation as to why it might be true, and I don't think it is. Care to indulge me?

jpt4 2y ago
If a person could unequivocally understand themselves without understanding their past, then the trivial understanding of mere knowledge of the past should have no impact on their current self-understanding capabilities. Thus, a person with ongoing amnesia, unable to form memories which extend beyond a day's context window, would have no disadvantage in terms of self-understanding.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  Further, history isn't just a series of events that happened long ago. It’s the story of how we - communities, nations, and civilizations have evolved over time. The experiences of previous generations shape the social, cultural, political, and economic structures that define a society today. Understanding this history allows a community to grasp why they are the way they are. For instance, the American Civil Rights Movement helps explain contemporary discussions on race in the United States. Without historical context, many aspects of the current social fabric would seem inexplicable or disconnected.- Collective memory, as Halbwachs would have it, is like the shared pool of information and experiences held by a group of people. This collective memory is essential for maintaining cultural continuity across generations. When a community loses touch with its history, it risks losing the cohesion that binds its members together, which can lead to a sort of cultural amnesia. This concept isn’t just for nations; it applies to any group with a shared identity, including religious communities, ethnic groups, and even professional organizations.- For example, indigenous communities often emphasize the importance of oral histories and traditions because these narratives carry the accumulated wisdom and identity of their people. If these stories are lost, so too is a sense of who they are as a distinct group.- An understanding of history also allows a community to make informed decisions about the future. When people understand the causes and consequences of past events, they are better equipped to navigate present challenges. Santayana's quote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," might sound like a cliché, but it's rooted in the idea that historical awareness helps societies avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. The European Union, for instance, was built on the memory of two world wars, which profoundly influenced its emphasis on cooperation and integration to prevent similar outcomes. Notwithstanding this whole mess in Ukraine ...

Earw0rm 2y ago

I'm not here to accuse you of racism. This isn't X. But there are some words here which require closer examination. "A people".. "themselves".. "we".. "our past". Who, exactly, gets to draw the boundary line around a people, or determine finally and canonically how "the" story of "our" past should be told? To whose ancient philosophers, priests and spiritual leaders should we look for wisdom? This is not to say that stories of the past have no value, but which ones are mine and which are yours, and whose record of past events is the most accurate or conveys the most wisdom, that's much harder to say. Signed, a UK citizen who is and forever will be pissed off with Brexit, not principally because of the needless economic damage or the lives uprooted, but because someone else decided to cast me as part of a "we" I never asked nor wanted to be part of.

sjducb 2y ago
But views and norms are shared within a country and you can make accurate predictions about people based on their race, country of birth and country where they grew up. - A white person from Sweden is likely to be pro choice by American standards. (95% chance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Sweden#:~:text=A%202024%20report%20by%20Pew,well%20as%20other%20abortion%20rights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Sweden#:~:text=A.... ) - An Egyptian is likely to think that FGM is normal and a good thing. (Over 85% https://egypt.unfpa.org/en/topics/female-genital-mutilation-5#:~:text=FGM%20in%20Egypt&text=According%20to%20the%20Egyptian%20Family,percent%20of%20whom%20by%20doctors https://egypt.unfpa.org/en/topics/female-genital-mutilation-.... ) - A Lebanese person will probably have antisemitic views (Over 85% chance https://global100.adl.org/country/lebanon/2014 https://global100.adl.org/country/lebanon/2014) I recently went to a wedding. Who got drunk and started a fight? Was it the only Irishman? I would predict that a white British person thinks that gun ownership should be restricted to military and police. A Swiss person will think that everyone should be given a rifle by the government. (Over 95 percent of Swiss households have a fully automatic rifle) You can group people by ethnicity and nationality, then observe big differences between the groups.
- Earw0rm 2y ago
  Nationality? Certainly. Race / ethnicity? With extreme caution. Most Black people in the US have enough of a shared history that it's a useful label, for example. But Ghana, Eritrea and Eswatini share almost none, even if their people might be superficially lumped together as ethnically Black African. But even if you can successfully draw a boundary around a people (Brits? White Brits? And that's before we even get into the whole Welsh-English-Scots thing), which stories do we tell? And how do we update them as - for example - it has become more and more apparent that Britain's relative prosperity during the 18th & 19th centuries was largely at the expense of conquered peoples and Empire territories - many of whose descendants (Indian, Irish, Jamaican or Ghanaian) are now an integral part of society here? How do we avoid crude re-tellings of WW2 where the Nazis are cast as certain and irredeemable baddies from the beginning, when the greatest of their atrocities - the one that marked them out forever as a greater monster than any of the Western allies, who had a far from unblemished record - wasn't actually known to our leaders until very late on in the war, by which time the Nazis were facing almost certain defeat? (I'm not saying, to be clear, that the Nazis were anything other than utterly evil - but up until the scale and nature of the Holocaust became apparent, the story did not resolve so cleanly into "good vs evil" as the way it's commonly told today).