Over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about making progress. Moving forward. Improving. Getting down the road. Or, as it is often called in business, traction.
Maybe you do this as well, but when a concept like progress takes up residence in my brain, I apply it to all kinds of things. First I was only thinking about the progress we are making at Do Good U, but soon I was thinking about progress in my golf game; in a book I’m writing (or, more accurately, need to be writing); a talk I actually am writing; a ministry I’m part of; and the United States of America.
Your list may be different, but even your list might include the USA. Like me, you might have wondered whether or not this country is or is not making progress. In fact I was with some very fine friends Wednesday morning when that topic came up.
What was delightful about that group is that no one got emotional. No one called anyone an idiot, or stupid, or any other pejorative term. Not everyone there was in a agreement on all things, but the conversation didn’t devolve into “Oh yeah???” as so often happens these days. There were feelings, but reason prevailed.
We all agreed on this: there have been steady advances in this country in many ways over the last few decades, but it seems that there are some who believe that to make progress from here, we need to, basically, start all over again. Since I’d been thinking about these things, I offered this perspective: “Government is not the problem — the governed are the problem.”
The governed, not the government, I posited, are the issue. Me, you, and our fellow citizens. I’m unhappy with us because we seem unable to remember the past.
Perhaps this is counterintuitive, but if you want to make progress in your life — or even in your country — you must remember the past.
A famous quote
There is a famous quote form George Santayana (pictured), and the complete and accurate quote is this (I’ve added the bold for emphasis):
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
How does this apply to us? And of course, how does it apply to our country?
It is simplest in life, though still too little applied, to remember the past and so not repeat it. I only had to hit my shin one time on the exposed corner of a tile step, and I remember that it hurt a lot. I have not made that mistake again. Progress!
Sometimes I have to have a bad experience more than once before I retain it, but as I grow wiser I remember more. So do you, and we show that we have grown because we do not repeat the past.
A great advantage we all have, and this includes us as both individuals as well as “the governed,” is books — especially history books.
Even though we did not live a particular past, we can still “remember it” through those who did. One “past” that has been repeated several times in several generations and several countries is socialism. I have never experienced that form of government personally, but the world-wide collective memory of socialism when applied in large scale is that it simply doesn’t work. It will not work in New York and it most definitely will not work in America. Will America try it? I sincerely doubt it. Too many people know it doesn’t work.
Likewise, I have never personally experienced a form of government known as a one-party Communist state, which is the current form of government in China, nor have I lived under a monarchy or a dictatorship or a theocracy. History can help me understand the pros and cons of each kind of government, so I can remember the past and not be condemned to repeat it.
But while we have access to the past, thanks to historians and authors and even living persons, do we remember? Not always.
What gets in the way?
Besides our own failure to remember the past, the thing that blinds us to the past most of all is the future. We love the future because it has not injured us yet. It is full of promise and hope and wonder. Young people say, with genuine desire and belief, “Tomorrow we will solve healthcare and hunger and homelessness, and we will do that by changing the form of government.” The past begs to differ.
Eric Hoffer said, A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past. He was right, of course, and so we remember the past the way we want it to have been, not the way it was.
I applaud those who want to make life better for us all. To make progress is admirable and desirable, but it simply cannot be done without remembering the past, and remembering it accurately. As Santayana said, “Progress… depends on retentiveness.”
The other part of preoccupation with the future is the mistaken belief that “our future” will be different than the future of those who lived in the past. That is not the height of hubris, but it is close. One of my questions to those who claim that is this: “When you hit your shin on the sharp corner of a tile step, will it not hurt?”
The future will not stop the pain, or the bleeding, because people are still people. Repeating the negative past will still yield negative results.
I’m looking forward to making even more progress in Do Good U, in my golf game, and of course in America. There is a lot of good happening here, and around the world. My hope is that we add to that good — and avoid the unnecessary evil — by remembering the past.
Remember to do good. It’s in you!
One Response
Lewis, a well written podcast and oh so true with where our country is today. To use a football analogy, it’s like going into a championship game with a rookie quarterback and a brand new offensive line who have never played together. Worse than that, they’re using a playbook that’s been tried multiple times and was an abject failure. What could go wrong.