Forgetful

You know how sometimes things seem to work in a series? Like, when you start reading about a topic…or even start reading a genre…and suddenly you’re seeing it pop up everywhere?

I recently finished reading a fantastic fictional account of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer called Saints and Villains. For readers unfamiliar with Bonhoeffer’s life, he was a theologian in Nazi Germany that was killed by the Gestapo for being part of the assassination plot against Hitler. For a while, it seemed, I encountered discussion about this period in history everywhere, in magazines and websites and even professional journal articles, for weeks.

I started a new book tonight, a non-fiction history of the Antwerp diamond heist of 2003. I intentionally try to outweigh my nonfiction reading with fiction, but this looked interesting, and I’m trying to heed a friend’s advice to always be reading one of each at any given time. Even there, however, I’m much less likely to read historical material, fiction or nonfiction. But, this is a trend I’ve broken with two consecutive books now. Hmmm…

I’ve never considered myself any sort of student of history, no more conversant than anyone else who took the required World Cultures courses during their undergrad days. I listened in high school history classes, and I like to think I have a working knowledge, although I’m often surprised at what I’ve forgotten. I just don’t frequently read historical material…I’m much more apt to watch a documentary film on a subject, instead.

Perhaps I should be embarrassed to say this, though. There’s certainly enough of revisionist history being taught, and apparently there’s more than enough naive and impressionable people to believe it. Going along with recent readings, I think immediately of those who would deny that the Holocaust occurred. I think of those who distorted America’s recent “war effort” by use of media smoke and mirrors. I think of how infrequently the fact that the U.S. built our own “internment camps” for those of Japanese ancestry is taught in the public classroom.

I feel like it sounds trite to use the Santayanan quote that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I have to say it, though, in order to point out the irony that we can’t forget what we’ve never learned. Education involves teaching all sides of everything…including the unpopular aspects. Otherwise we will cyclically repeat the darkest parts of our pasts, collectively and individually, and remain in the underbelly of our human condition, instead rising above our pasts. 

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