One of my favourite activities is researching the past. It is through an attempt to reach back in time that one gains a footing that allows one to move forward in time. What one realizes is how much the realm of time is akin to an enormous tree whose roots stretch down into the rotted past and whose branches reach upward into the light of the sun and speculations as to where one's future lies. In both cases the process is an active process in which time does not have an existence other than as a marker of the present moment in a very tiny space that one thinks of as one's present awareness.
A Forest of Life
The forest analogy applies and seems to fit very very well. The past is very much like the bedding and soil of a large forest in which the trees have a foundation and suffocate all but the longest living in a canopy of position and action. The taller the tree the greater the advantages conferred from its ability to drive roots deeper and deeper into the ground until they reach a well spring of water that feeds the present and future continuously lubricating and enabling the present and affording branches the liquid they need to stretch ever higher and higher into their future.
Being able to see both the forest and the trees is a challenge to an author that seeks to recreate elements of the past that form the mighty branches of the trees that form the present. In a world of human beings the past is literally the remains of ancestral trees that oft times live deep in the soil, unrecognizable in the present, the dust or soil of human remains has given life to a host of creatures that have been born of seeds, nurtured by sunlight, lived and acted within their relative spheres of action, died, possibly to be preserved or to become the food of subsequent generations. Hosted in libraries or eaten by life, the relics of the past become the food of the future.
Light is the Source of Life and Our Being
And, so the cycle of life, birth and death is repeated over and over again in its myriad of forms. Its manifestations ever being reborn, transformed and inspired by creations of light. Who can not revere the many ancient peoples for studying and worshipping light. It is the agent of all life and is the preserver of all things. For, within light there is information that is retained forever.
Talk about the infinite! Light is the great storage place of information about the past and future of all living things, animal, plant, mineral, gas, molecular, astronomic, cosmic. Yes, of everything that ever was and will be.
In the Time of Wim and Wuh
We are the transformation of light energy into action, literally. We move and have our being because of light. Light pervades everything we know. This is why the School of Light was created and why light is the focus of the lives of Wimbledum and Wuh Lax in my novels of ancient times.
The Importance of Finding What's down There in the Root Area
Obviously, our past is mostly something that is trodden on and has our least respect. The past is rotten in a literal sense. It represents a horrific dark stage in what otherwise would be a golden world of sunshine. From the past, emerge the demons and the unknown or esoteric challenges to present conventions. Best to keep the past hidden, eh! Something might reach up from the past to challenge our reality present and uncertain future. All our future, emerges from our shared and collective pasts. What do these pasts hide that might intervene in the present?
When we examine the past we see that a lot of human blood was spilt, a lot of trees were felled and innumerable entities were sacrificed towards goals that we may presently regard as meaningless. The past is, however, anything but meaningless. Within the past is all the meaning that drives the present forward and gives credence to the goals of the future. As our children are born, we do not burden them with all the information of the 'sins' of the past, but we do water down relevant facts that we, as custodians of information about the past, regard as protective of their future.
Historical Secrets that Harm by Creating Ignorance
In the process of guarding information about the past, we deny our children the pain of experiencing the many strands of experience that have shaped the present. Cleansed and cleared of debris, we convey the impression that nothing was achieved and that the past is something that is not relevant.
We denigrate the past by say that it is history. It is valueless. It is gone. Why think about the past? Move on and deal with your future. In presenting and hiding our case for the past, we deny the soil that is relevant for building a taller structure in the future. We wonder why our kids are shallow, why they make so many mistakes, why they do not have respect, and why we see wars and conflict after so much was done to create the peace, that we and our ancestors fought for, our trees were cut done for, and which provide the shaky foundations of our many presents.
Our offspring are denied the information that they need to deal with issues that come from the past and impact our present in ways that we cannot imagine without a thorough understanding of our past. We tend to put the blinkers on our children thinking that this will protect them. Instead, we create the ditches that will lead them to their slaughter in wars and conflicts, errors and mistakes that we have created for them. We must tell them about the slaughters committed by Caesar to repay debt. We all need to be mindful of the atrocities of Hitler and his gangs to repay the debt of humiliation. We need to be aware of the future potential for crimes of Russia by inspired Putins who would reach into the past to avenge our arrogance and deceit.
We give our children a living hell, proclaim it to be paradise and wonder why they and those that emerge from our uneven past would destroy the foundations we have created for them as they realize that we are misleading them into their futures. We cannot succeed without building the bridges to understanding the past and coming to terms with its implications in our futures.
Our Biggest Mistakes are Our Lack of Understanding Historical Forces and Debt
The biggest mistake that we make is to believe in time when time does not really exist. We see time as our excuse to ignore our past. We say to ourselves that the past is not the present and that the future is not the past. In so doing, we lie to ourselves and we deny that which is our very salvation, which is that the past, present, and future are one and the same process.
When we should have our children understand the past, we make it unattractive and relegate it to the rubbish heap like so much that will pollute our futures. We hide our caustic dump sites in the landscape hoping that they will not poison our presents and our futures, but this is our biggest mistake. Pollution and debt coming from the past is something that we need to address on a continuing basis.
By revealing the past and opening it up, we can learn how to deal with it more effectively and our understanding will enable a stronger base on which to build the future. Our system of debt based capitalism needs to be understood in its historical sense and the models of Marx updated to show whether and how the processes of so-called free economic activity can hurt and destroy people.
We all need to work towards continuously healing and revising our systems before they create situations where the only change will be catastrophic. If we do not create a capitalist system that can deal effectively with the challenges of financial debt, we will see it destroy the futures of our children. Our governments are bankrupted in their neglect of the issues that bring about violence and conflict. They do not understand the perfidious nature of debt and how it provides the basis of war as in the past and into the future.
We need to continuously chip away at our failing systems so that they do not provide a landslide or tsunami of uncontrollable forces. Our denials of the past can and will be destructive if they are not dealt with in the most thorough way using our greatest intelligence and ingenuity. Without chipping away at our problems, we create the Middle East and East European crises that prevent a healing our relationships. Without a grounding of understanding that comes with an understanding of our histories, we move blindly to destroy our friends around the world and they us.
Russia, Cambodia, China need to understand what the idealism of communism did to hurt people. Germany needs to understand what the killing of innocents did to hurt people. America needs to understand what the killing of native peoples did to hurt people. Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Japan, China and Italy, need to understand what the killing people in their colonies did to hurt people.
We need to heal our presents by having our children come to terms with the many atrocities of the past despite the pain and discomfort that this temporarily creates as we clear up the rubbish tips we would otherwise hide and which would fester under our feet. We need to teach history in ways that our children can see for themselves how to resolve difficult issues and heal the many wounds emerging from our pasts.