I have been guilty of using language imprecisely. “The past” is what has happened. It is impossible to escape the past. Your very bodies are made up of the chemical and biological interactions that took place in the past. They condition your reactions. They affect your present decisions.
Your memories of the past are not the past itself. As Korzybski put it, the territory is not the map. Your memories are not just approximations of the past; they are approximations shaped consciously or unconsciously by your opinions and prior experiences.
As Korzybski also noted, one of the things that makes human beings different from other creatures on the planet is that it is possible for us to know about things that happened longer ago than any single human being’s lifespan. We can do that by asking people older than ourselves; we can do it by reading works written long ago or written by people who’ve read works written long ago. We can do it based on the artifacts left by people in the past; we can do it based on tradition or observing the present and making inferences about the past based on those observations.
We do not rebuild ourselves from scratch every morning. It is impossible and even if possible the transaction costs of such a practice would be too high.
History is not the past. History is what has been written about the past, the artifacts from the past, and traditions or things about the present from which inferences may be drawn about the past. If every history book were burned, every statue or memorial destroyed, traditions banned and uprooted, and new languages invented that eschewed the accretions of the past, we would still not escape the past. However, we would be subject to the whims and notions of rulers and politicians. Mussolini’s dictum of “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state” would be realized. History defends us against the passing excesses of the present.
“History defends us against the passing excesses of the present.”
It seems we have to go through these paroxysms periodically. Just wondering; all the people currently in need of washing their underwear over the KKK were exactly where and doing exactly what about it two weeks ago?
They were turning over rocks looking for a Trump- Russia collusion. None found. Now, they’ve successfully branded him racist for condemning the violence,”from many sources”, “from all sides”. Successful enough that CEO’s from his business councils have quit and distanced themselves from the Trump administration. Everyone in business will now be wary of dealing with this suspect President, who may be stained with suspicion of racism even though in a 70 year public life, no “Furman-like” evidence has been produced.
Where they were was beating the bushes for a political weapon to use against Trump, have they found one?
The business leaders will be back, gray. Big Business and government love each other.
Hardly reported, the supposedly offensive statement was a selectively edited tape on the news networks. Trump explicitly named two groups at the event on one side: white supremacists and KKK explicitly, and true believers in the history of the south. He did not say there were bad guys on both sides alone, he explicitly said the KKK and white supremes were full of bad guys, and the true believers “had some good people.” The tape was edited to make it seem like he meant good people in both groups. Factually incorrect. Media reaches new heights of flat out dishonesty. But there are too many eager to spread the lies. And then Trump shot his mouth off and it went bad fast…..