Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today. We need to know what kind of firm ground other men, belonging to generations before us, have found to stand on. In spite of changing conditions of life they were not very different from ourselves, their thoughts were the grandfathers of our thoughts, they managed to meet situations as difficult as those we have to face, to meet them sometimes lightheartedly, and in some measure to make their hopes prevail. We need to know how they did it.
In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking. That is why, in times like ours, when old institutions are caving in and being replaced by new institutions not necessarily in accord with most men’s preconceived hopes, political thought has to look backwards as well as forwards.
John Dos Passos, The Use of the Past
Every generation rewrites the past
This content has been archived. It may no longer be accurate or relevant.
Sadly in the rewriting they muddy the waters of what the past was really like. Thus when they see ‘great evils’ in the world today they think they are the first, even though the un-watered down past would have told them it’s nothing new and might actually still be gentler than the great evils their grandparents faced.
I wonder how folks now think slavery was invented in 1619?