A Culture of Forgetting
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Why are we so alienated from our past and so reluctant to study it? Why does the prevailing attitude seem to be that the past has nothing to teach us?
The common assumption, shared by our political leaders, is that current issues have no real historical context. Granted, there seems to be good reasons for what historian Tony Judt calls this “culture of forgetting”: a desire to put the horrors of the 20th century’s calamities behind us, the seemingly arbitrary and cataclysmic pace of economic change, the tidal force of globalization and, in our own country, an apparently dysfunctional democracy and persistence of unresolved conflict. In Judt’s words:
“Far from escaping the twentieth century, we need, I think, to go back and look a bit more carefully. We need to learn again—or perhaps for the first time—how war brutalizes and degrades winners and losers alike and what happens to us when, having heedlessly waged war for no good reason, we are encouraged to inflate and demonize our enemies in order to justify that war's indefinite continuance. And perhaps, in this protracted electoral season, we could put a question to our aspirant leaders: Daddy (or, as it might be, Mommy), what did you do to prevent the war?” (for the full text, see http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21311)
The view here remains that a significant part of whatever “identity” we possess, either as individuals or as a society, must derive from the collective memory and interpretations of the past. On the subject of our first issue, “war and memory,” we need to remember or we risk forgetting the meaning of war, its complexities and contradictions, its personal and social consequences, and hence risk losing the kind of insights and perspective that Judt reminds us that we need to judge our current actions.
It is our hope that HistoryWire will provide a forum where Canadians can engage in a discourse about the role and meaning of their history, that it will serve as an intermediary between our past and present, that it will help countermand the culture of forgetting and illustrate that past is prologue.
The common assumption, shared by our political leaders, is that current issues have no real historical context. Granted, there seems to be good reasons for what historian Tony Judt calls this “culture of forgetting”: a desire to put the horrors of the 20th century’s calamities behind us, the seemingly arbitrary and cataclysmic pace of economic change, the tidal force of globalization and, in our own country, an apparently dysfunctional democracy and persistence of unresolved conflict. In Judt’s words:
“Far from escaping the twentieth century, we need, I think, to go back and look a bit more carefully. We need to learn again—or perhaps for the first time—how war brutalizes and degrades winners and losers alike and what happens to us when, having heedlessly waged war for no good reason, we are encouraged to inflate and demonize our enemies in order to justify that war's indefinite continuance. And perhaps, in this protracted electoral season, we could put a question to our aspirant leaders: Daddy (or, as it might be, Mommy), what did you do to prevent the war?” (for the full text, see http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21311)
The view here remains that a significant part of whatever “identity” we possess, either as individuals or as a society, must derive from the collective memory and interpretations of the past. On the subject of our first issue, “war and memory,” we need to remember or we risk forgetting the meaning of war, its complexities and contradictions, its personal and social consequences, and hence risk losing the kind of insights and perspective that Judt reminds us that we need to judge our current actions.
It is our hope that HistoryWire will provide a forum where Canadians can engage in a discourse about the role and meaning of their history, that it will serve as an intermediary between our past and present, that it will help countermand the culture of forgetting and illustrate that past is prologue.
Comments
You state there is a “common assumption” that current issues have no real historical context. Is this assumption true? Let’s ask. You state the assumption is shared by “our political leaders”. Is this true? Let’s ask. If the assumptions are true, are there “good reasons” for them? Let’s ask. Is it because there is a desire to put the 20th Century’s calamities behind us? Let’s ask. Is Canada’s democracy generally seen as being “dysfunctional”? Is Canada seen as having a “persistence of unresolved conflict”?
Is it because we lack collective memory of war that we persist in waging war, or is it despite our collective memory that we continue, urged on by some new fancied imperative with its unique justifications?
Let’s do a survey of “our political leaders” – easy to poll the newly-elected members of Parliament: 1) Name a current issue you consider to be important. 2) What to you consider to be the historical context of that issue? 3) If you are aware of historical context, how should we apply it to resolve the issue? If you are unaware of historical context, why do you think you have not looked to history for possible answers?
We might be surprised by what we would find if we approached these questions as investigative journalists rather than lamenting historians.
1. How to study history when history has been recorded by those who cheerfully re-invent it to serve their own agendas? Women, for instance, are so frequently written out of history that if young women actually bothered to read most of what was written they'd get the distinct impression that they'd been born yesterday, and have about as much hope of changing the world as a pansy in a snowstorm.
2. Is the idea here that if we just educated ourselves about past wars we wouldn't be stupid enough to engage in war any more? Are you kidding? Wars are as much a part of the world as the momentary peace that comes after them. You can't have one without the other. And besides, war is not all bad. It creates entirely new economies. War is one of the most efficient methods of shaking things up. It inspires much-needed changes in leadership. And inventors finally get the resources they need to finalize their inventions. (Inventions produced as a direct result of the outbreak of war include: the microwave oven, penicillin, radar, and superglue)
3. "A culture of forgetting" might otherwise be termed "a culture of inadvertent forgiveness," which is not a bad thing, is it? For instance, who wants the old wars to follow the new immigrants to Canada? Believe me, there are plenty of families passing on historical hatreds that it would be better to forget, if forgetting meant there might be some chance of moving beyond hatred to a place of acceptance.
In reality most nations seem to me to be run by "arts-men" or soldiers -and precious few by scientists. You can run this back for the past century and I believe you will see the truth of what I am saying.
Bill Gates may make the money but Barack Obama runs the US. Stephen Harper is (was?) an economist for God's sake -the furthest thing from a scientist!
Those who have a belief in the value of history have a massive sales task ahead of them -but it is a very worthwhile challenge indeed. We need to overcome this ingrained belief that science is "more important" than the liberal arts.
The liberal arts produce the leaders of the world -like it or not! Churchill, Kennedy, Roosevelt,Clinton,Woodrow Wilson -even Hitler for heaven's sake!
The only guys I can think of who were even close to the title "scientist" were Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter -and look what became of them!
We need to sell history as a vital leadership subject!
It is...isn't it?
Jock Williams