Infamously Forgetful

Dennis Mansfield had a great post up on Pearl Harbor Day that got me thinking. As Dennis referenced, this tendancy to forget the past is part of human nature, going back to the days of the Bible.

It’s popular advice and good advice as far as it goes to “not live in the past.”  However, the perverse problem with our society is that we live as if there was no past. British Psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple once asked a young man when World War II occurred. The young man replied that he thought it had happened  in the 18th century. Dr. Dalrymple thought this was a good answer, as it showed the  young man was at least aware that there had been a century prior to the one he was living in.

It’d be easy to blame it all on public schools and lousy history curriculum, and a media that’s had little interest in teaching history, but if the problem goes back into Bible times, that doesn’t seem a fair answer. It’s ultimately the fault of parents who didn’t value history themselves. As a result, with the up and coming generation, we are a people that doesn’t know we are, doesn’t know where we’ve been, and has no clue where we’re going.

Read more at Adam’s Blog