Tuesday, November 06, 2007

On the Importance of History

"If you do not know where you come from, you will always be a child." -- Cicero

In other words, you will be "without power, without authority, without the ability to act fully in the world or to understand properly how the world works" (Simon Goldhill, "Love Sex, and Tragedy", 4).

If you do not know who Cicero is, he is speaking about you.

Answer these questions, in the most fundamental way possible:

Who are you?
Where are you going?
What should happen?
What do you want to do?
Where do you come from?

If your notion of history only includes what happened during your lifetime, or even the lifetime of the United States, then you cannot answer these questions.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Could you answer them ?

Troy Camplin said...

I do answer them, with every posting on my blog.