An interesting word. It is an adjective meaning not eradicable; not capable of being eradicated, rooted out, or completely removed. Thinking about world developments and the current divisive culture now in the United States, I decided to look backwards a few decades and revisit the happenings I lived through and try and understand why American culture is what it is now. Because our world is made by history and because knowledge of the past offers new perspectives about the present, studying history gives us deeper insight into our lives and the lives of others. These are reasons enough to pursue it.
In 1905 George Santayana (a philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist, born in Spain, raised and educated in the US and identified himself as an American although he always retained a valid Spanish passport) was born Jorge Agustin Nicolas Ruiz de Santayana y Borras, made a speech in which he said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Winston Churchill changed the quote slightly in a speech in 1948 to the House of Commons saying, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” Being an old person, I remember the past and I have learned from it. Because our world is made by history, and because knowledge of the past offers new perspectives about the present, visiting history should give us a deeper insight in our life and the lives of others. Here is my selected recounting of history…
*1959 – SHOULD WE REALLY PLAN TO GO TO THE MOON?
*1969 – HOW SOON DO WE GET OUT OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM? (FIRST MOON LANDING, JULY 20, 1969)
*2022 – SHOULD A PRIVATE BUSINESS OWNED BY RICH GUYS BE INVOLVED WITH SPACE TRAVEL?
*1959 – SHOULD THE BLACK MAN HAVE A PLACE IN WHITE SOCIETY? (KING AND MALCOLM KILLED BLOODILY UNDER TELEVISION LIGHTS)
*1969 – SHOULD BLACK SOCIETY HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH WHITE SOCIETY?
*2022 – SHOULD WHITE PEOPLE BE CONCERNED WITH BLACKS REPLACING THE WHITE MAJORITY?
Two Kennedys, Chappaquiddick, Che, Vietnam, Biafra and Czechoslovakia. Churchill and Eisenhower, Dulles and Stevenson, Nehru, Ho, Schweitzer, MacArthur and John L. Lewis. Khrushchev, De Gaulle, Thurgood Marshall
*1959 – IS THERE ANYTHING MORE DANGEROUS THAN COMMUNISM?
*1969 – IS THERE ANYBODY MORE BORING THAN AN ANTI-COMMUNIST?
*2022 – AND NOW THERE IS SOCIALISM, A TERM MANY DO NOT DEFINE CORRECTLY.
Pope John, Radioactive Strontium, Little Rock, the Military Industrial Complex, nuclear era showdown and backdown between the United States and Russia over Cuba.
*1959 – IS THERE ANYBODY WHO THINKS WE SHOULD NOT RESIST AGGRESSORS?
*1969 – WHY NOT RESIST THE DRAFT?
*2022 – IMMIGRANTS ARE AGGRESSORS?
Kennedy, the Birchers, Bishop Pike, Gagarin, Freedom Riders, the Berlin Wall.
*1959 – SHOULD THE GOVERNMENTS MAKE CONTRACEPTIVE INFORMATION PUBLIC?
*1969 – SHOULD POT BE LEGALIZED?
*2022 – I REST MY CASE.
John Glenn, The Cuban Missile Crisis, Pope John (Pacem in Terris) Medicare
*1959 – WHICH COLLEGE ARE YOU GOING TO?
*1969 – CAN ANY COLLEGE EDUCATION BE RELEVANT?
*2022 – AGAIN, I REST MY CASE.
Berkeley, Mario Savio, North Vietnam, The Beatles, Dr. Strangelove and Becket, Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music
*1959 – WHICH POLITICAL PARTY DO YOU BELONG TO?
*1969 – ARE POLITICAL PARTIES OF ANY SIGNIFICANCE AT ALL?
*2022 – WE STILL HAVE A TWO PARTY SYSTEM WITH MANY STEMS WITHIN.
*1959 – SCHOOL SHOOTING IN THE BROX
*1969 – SCHOOL SHOOTINGS IN CHICAGO, LOS ANGELES, WINSTON SALEM, TOMAH.
“Mounting evidence that society is out of control breeds disillusionment with science”, explained Alvin Toffler, a futurist of the 1960’s, “History is a great alternative to the super industrial environment we don’t know how to live in.” Could the same be said for the super technological environment?
The way that some will live in the new world is simply by pretending that it is the old one. “When faced with a totally new situation,” Marshall McLuhan wrote in “The Medium is the Massage,” we tend always to “attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the recent past. We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”
The draft, Hawks and Doves, Vietnam, Arab-Israeli war, Dominican Republic, France quits NATO
If you don’t believe there’s been a changing of the mental guard – think your own thoughts as have now browsed over this sketch of time tick-tocked towards today. Think your own thoughts as you browse you brain for answers…
…and thank you to Robin Hoar for the idea!