Condemned

On my way to synagogue each morning I pass the house of a chiropractor who always seems to have an old Chevrolet in his driveway. It's invariably one that needs work and I suspect that it is a hobby of his to restore them. I remember cars like them from my childhood and, I assume, he does as well. That it was his childhood too. We all remember those days fondly and, since our senses and learning ability were greater then, the images from the past are our strongest.

Nostalgia. “Those were the days my friend. We thought they'd never end.” But they did. So we recapture them any way we can. However we adapt to the tools of the present and future, however we observe the norms of our times, we live in the past. We remember the music of our childhood, and the dances, and the events – both personal and national. Just as our children will do.  They will reject the trappings of our youth as we spurned those of our parents. (And, like us, they would be unable to tolerate the way of life of the distant past.)

That spurning made sense. We were smarter than our parents and more “with it.” We knew that the world was changing and that we had to change with it. George Santayana was only one of many who said it, but he is the one most remembered for the idea: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Those are strong words. Especially “condemned.” It is clearly a pejorative, having the same root as “damned,” and we accepted the wisdom of the adage and its denigration of the past without protest. A variant, that lack of knowledge of the past has doomed us to repeat it, is no better.

With age comes experience and knowledge. And, very often, conservatism. In many cultures age is considered to be accompanied by wisdom. The knowledge we acquired when we were young has been replaced by the wisdom that we gained as the years passed. So sometimes we recognize that the changes of our New Age may not benefit us or our children. Some of our childhood experiences and some of the world in which we lived then were preferable to what exists now. Yet we are taught that change is always for the better. Indeed, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The implication is that no one in his right mind would want to repeat it.

Some of those past memories, though, aren't so bad. Nor are the realities they represented. Some of what has replaced them is of questionable value to many, and repulsive to some. We need parental controls on our television sets and on our computers to prevent our children from watching what we believe to be harmful to them, and to keep them from being attracted by individuals who might have a negative influence on them. We have movie and television rating systems that warn us of the threats in popular culture. We worry about our food and our environment, and we fear to let our children experience the world without proper safeguards.

But we can't stop the world and get off. What has happened over the years has come to be labeled “lifestyle creep.” However undesirable the changes that have occurred, they are now part of the scenery. They're background noise. We can't get rid of them. We can't go home again. And, according to Santayana and others, we are damned and doomed if we choose to do so.

The result is a naїve belief that things will get better – that the world of the future is certain to be superior to what we have already experienced. Perhaps that is the case, but accepting change for its own sake rather than learning from the past, is risky. Not all change is for the better. Sometimes it is better to relive a certain and well-defined past than to gamble on a future filled with unintended consequences.

To a degree, Santayana and those who shared his view were right. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned likely to repeat it.” But that's not always bad. There is no single solution or formula. What may have been the worst of times was also the best of times.

Next episode: “The Trouble With Israel” – And why the world hates her.