When the Present is Everything - Sept 7 2025

 

When the Present is Everything

Sept 7 2025

It seems every generation 

needs to relearn the past.

This is the thin reed

o; which progress rests.

Progress,

which, in the void of ignorance

we simply assume will continue. 

“Progress”,

even though it wavers back and forth,

will flatline for a time,

climbs fitfully.

Of course, “the past” is incorrect.

It suggests history’s a single one thing

arrived at by consensus.

But instead, it’s wilful blindness,

versions

we promote and suppress;

half truths,

cherished myths,

and convenient suppositions.

Not that history is fixed;

it’s not the seamless narrative

crammed into us in school; 

there’s always more to learn from the past,

to reinterpret

unearth in the gaps.

I’ve heard that cemetery cafés are popular.

We dance on our ancestors’ graves,

shatter the solemnity

desecrate sacred ground.

Because to seekers of pleasure

the present is everything,

while the past is conveniently buried

beneath the manicured grass.

They’re all dead now.

Those who went through the war,

saw the death camps firsthand,

felt the shame.

And when no one who was there remains

memory fades;

who gets to say

what really went on?

Why we don’t learn from the past 

I’m unable to say,

especially 

when it isn’t even over yet.

Or perhaps, there’s no reason to.

Not if progress is a myth

we tell ourselves,

and instead of making it

we’re simply circling;

burdened

with the reptilian minds

that never really left us,

the inner Neanderthal

hairy as he ever was.

Like a man with one leg

who’s trying to get ahead

but can only turn;

but still feels sure 

he’s getting somewhere.

I was reading about the popularity in Germany (but really, much of the West these days)

of the ethno-nationalist populism of the extreme right. Especially among disaffected youth. (Or perhaps, to excuse their behaviour, this is just the latest iteration of the youthful need to shock and rebel, the desire to belong. One hopes they’ll grow out of it.) But both old and young, what stands out is the cynical distortion of history and the obliteration of collective memory. 

Although perhaps this time it’s different. That instead of a phase, it will be a lasting and consequential change. Because living online, as people do these days, exposes the credulous to voices from the fringe that would never before have had a platform of any sort; because the internet’s  pernicious algorithms give prominence to the extremes and the sensational; and because the internet allows people to find like-minded allies who — especially if there are only a few of them — could never have met in an unwired world.

The “Greatest Generation” are all dead, or are soon to be. No one who was actually there is left. So there is no one with the authority and gravitas to refute and rebuke the deniers and dissemblers. And so, in the cacophony of competing voices, the truth gets lost.

https://globe2go.pressreader.com/article/282230901823684