Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
February 6, 2024
Yesterday, while spending a bit of time with my sister Dianna, our conversation came around to the sad reality that in today’s world society in general is taking the position that anything that might offend someone should be eliminated. This holds true in our person-to-person interactions as well as in the broader societal expressions such as statues, building names and even religion.
I find this to be tragic. History is one of the great teachers and should be cherished not erased.
Currently I have been reading Supernatural Direction and Meditation written by Thomas Merton. Within this book I came across the following which I feel expands upon the importance of our history and the need to think about such things that we may find disturbing or contrary to our personal likes and or beliefs.
I would be inclined to say that a nun who has meditated on the Passion of Christ but has not meditated on the extermination camps of Dachau and Auschwitz has not yet fully entered into the experience of Christianity in our time. For Dachau and Auschwitz are two terrible, indeed apocalyptic, presentations of the reality of the Passion renewed in our time. Many pious people might be inclined to think that such things were “distractions; and attempt to exclude them from their minds. If such a revulsion were elevated to a level of strict principle and unvarying policy, it would lead to a complete lack of realism in the spiritual life. Such things should be known, thought about, understood in prayer. Indeed, the contemplative above all should ruminate on these terrible realities which are so symptomatic, so important, so prophetic.
…a complete lack of realism… Is that not what is being pushed upon us today through the gentrification and whitewashing of our history?
The philosopher George Santayana is quoted as having stated, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We as a people have lived through many great and wonderous events. We have also struggled and survived horrific times. We are not a people formed by only the good but are products of our total lived experiences. Should we not remember both, with honesty and clarity?