In a previous post I talked about some of the common reasons people generally think it’s important to study the past.
Lately, however, I’ve been thinking about just how much of the past we should be revisiting. I definitely think at this particular moment in time perhaps we aren’t paying enough attention to certain aspects of our history, and we do so at our peril.
But what if events of the past are simply too painful to revisit even if there are lessons to be learned? Is there a time after which we should let the past go, stop thinking about it and move on, indeed when it’s actually better for us to do so? For how long does remembering what’s in the rearview actually serve us before holding onto it proceeds to harm us?
These questions came to my mind after listening to Bari Weiss’s podcast, specifically an episode titled “Why Men Seek Danger,” wherein she interviewed journalist Sebastian Junger who had some interesting things to say about human nature and events that cause trauma.
While some people who experience trauma can have lingering effects that last a lifetime, Junger pointed out that prolonged suffering is generally due to particular subsequent circumstances and not the initial trauma itself, because human beings are actually hardwired to get over trauma pretty quickly. Essentially, it’s a product of evolutionary biology that we can forgive and forget. We have to or otherwise the species would be doomed.
My historian brain started wondering about this in the macro sense, such as the way large-scale devastating historic events can affect an entire swath of humanity. If humans are hardwired to get over trauma quickly — whether individually or collectively — does this mean we don’t really need to pay attention to history, but instead we can march forth confident in the fact that we’ll get over it and everything will be okay? Should we simply let the past go?
My friend Dan, who is also a history nerd, and I recently talked about this. We tried to imagine something like what if the 10-times great grandchildren of someone who lived through a historical catastrophe such as World War II or being enslaved or the Black Death was expected to feel the same level of pain and stress of it all those generations later that their grandparent who experienced it firsthand did? Is that sustainable? Or practical? Or reasonable? Or even necessary? Don’t they HAVE to let it go?
As an example, I have a friend who is German and has lived with the legacy of the Holocaust in her family and country. But she is only 40 years old. Does her future have to be hampered by something she had nothing to do with because she wasn’t even born at the time? And if so, why and for how long? What is the statute of limitations on pain? For how long do we remember the wrongs of the past in order to learn from them, and when is it okay to let them go and move on without disrespecting what came before?
We’ve all heard the phrase “time heals all wounds,” but does it?….
There have been several articles and books written in recent years regarding an epigenetic theory which suggests we actually remember forever and not exactly intentionally. According to this theory, traumas change how one’s genes function which can then can be passed down to the next generation. I’m not sure I believe in this entirely, but it makes me wonder what biological function could this gene alteration perform? I mean if we engage in some Darwinian thinking here, we’d have to conclude there was an evolutionary purpose to it, and being perpetually trapped in a state of paralysis or arrested development because of previous horrors doesn’t exactly fit the biological script.
Perhaps it embeds itself in us deeply as a survival mechanism. We’re supposed to remember the pains of our past, at least for a time, because it will help us to avoid similar traumas or deal with new ones better in the future. When you put your hand on that stove and get burned, it stings for a while. But then it heals, scars over, and you mostly forget about it, and hopefully you know not to do that again. It’s all part of the learning curve of being human. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, and all that.
But then again maybe we are in a state of arrested development. As a historian who takes the long view, I also know too well that humans appear to suffer from collective, selective amnesia at times. If traumas have embedded themselves in our DNA to help us somehow, we certainly seem to be able to ignore them at will. The proof is in the fact that we tend to do the same things over and over often without any awareness that we are even repeating ourselves. Why don’t we seem to learn?
So, this presents a bit of a conundrum…
Should we embrace forgetting because it’s a built-in survival instinct that enables us to move forward without being crippled by the traumas of our past?
Or should we embrace remembering because we don’t exist in a vacuum and can only act and progress relative to what came before?
Is there a middle way?
I would suggest yes, there is. I harp on this with my students all the time. Humans like black and white thinking, either/or propositions. It’s cleaner and more clear. But the reality is that life almost always happens in the gray middle. We may not always like that fact, but it is the truth. So, let’s get comfortable with it because….
When I look at some of the monumental challenges we face in the world right now such as war, pandemics, natural disasters, economic crises, and climate change, the one thing I know for sure is that human beings have been through all of these things before. This is where remembering, though painful at times, can be helpful. If we simply turn away in our pain and choose to forget, then the potential lessons of the past are gone to us and the traumas will surely revisit us. As Shakespeare once quipped, what’s past will become prologue.
I propose we respect our history for what it can teach us no matter how long ago things happened. It may not seem like things that occurred centuries ago are relevant to us, but who’s to say unless we look? It’s not always necessary to reinvent the wheel. But then we need to let go of being shackled by the past, particularly for things that did not happen in our lifetimes. None of us can change or be responsible for things our ancestors did or experienced, and it’s a fool’s errand to think we can or that somehow we should forever be repentant for things we had no hand in doing. This makes no sense and keeps us from moving forward.
We must acknowledge the lessons of the past, tweak them for our own times and then make choices that make sense for us, now, in order to move on and create a better future.
So, the answer to the conundrum is that we can and should do both. For the good of all of us, we must remember AND then forget.
I think both are required.
We must remember, as a learning as well as a warning system. But to remember does not mean we should not also forget. The word is inadequate, used to illustrate the dichotomy, but you chose the better word in your essay...forgive.
While we must remember, we must also forgive/forget in the sense of not personalizing the injuries if ancient, or in the sense of not seeking revenge if more recent. I doubt there's anyone alive who cannot look back into their family tree and not be a victim of the worst things one can imagine.
That ancestral trauma does not define us, there's no score of who is winning through the millennia. What defines us is who we are what we do while alive, and the impact of younger folks you have influence on who will outlive you, that's it. Work on improving what you can, learn from the past, but seek only to prevent the horrors of history from becoming present.