How do you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been? Whether Native Americans (to use that title) or immigrants (as nearly everyone in this country are a descendant), we owe our personal history to those that preceded each generation.
We may all have some smart and successful people as ancestors. However, I’m willing to bet there is at least one branch or character in each of our family trees that was a little notorious and the family chooses to ignore them.
Sometimes, those bad tree limbs fall away or long forgotten. Perhaps their actions were so horrible or successful they could not be ignored. Either way, reality tells us the family tree has some interesting branches stretching over time.
The American Civil War was such a blemish on our American heritage tree. It’s the “infamous” relative we sometimes don’t want to claim. It’s the branch we wish had never grown. History says you can’t forget them but must learn from them. Ignoring them will not work.
However, as Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed, “… Let him without sin cast the first stone…”
The events happening over one hundred and fifty years ago was a terrible event in America’s history. It’s unfortunate but it was an event that had to happen to change or eliminate the “sins” of our national past.
Paraphrasing Jesus again, the nation had to learn to “…go and sin no more.”
In contemporary times, we too often see the practice of Sociological Relativism being maliciously employed. This means there are observations being made by contemporary society trying to align their own personal behaviors and moral beliefs as the basis to judge others of the past or another culture. In other words, we judge other cultures and societies, regardless whether contemporary or historical, as “good, bad, or evil,” using our contemporary and “more civilized mores and beliefs.”
Who made us prosecutor, judge, and jury?
It is too easy to paint individuals as part of a much larger group just because they share one or more characteristics of a similar group. If people presume to create assumptions on the quality of a culture or person’s soul based on those similar characteristic, you are practicing sociological relativism, i.e., judging others based on your rules not by their norms of culture or history.
If any judgment is to be made on this earth, each person should be judged for the totality of their lives, not geographic birth, nor the period in which they were born. Because you lived in the South does not mean you are a racist. If you lived in the North, it did not mean your family didn’t own slaves for a hundred years. So, who is the “most guilty?”
If you were born in 1776, 1791, 1812, 1861, 1941, 1963, 2000, 2008, 2016, or 2020, you are no worse, no smarter, or a more morally grounded person than someone born in any of those previous generations.
You only have the benefit of the lessons learned from the history and generations of the past. To paraphrase Professor of Economics, Thomas Sowell, “You’ve learned to use trade-offs to create the desired outcomes.”
Let’s get serious. You go through the same human process for decision making as they did in each of those earlier periods. However, if you’re alive today, you have access to more information than you can possibly read. So, ask and answer this question, “Are we a better people today, than we were in 1776?”
So, we are here, not by coincidence but by the grace of God, still trying to learn our lessons with one experience “stacked upon the previous lesson.” We’re moving through life on a journey, as Doctor of Philosophy so artfully explained where we wander, seek, find, and discover a different form of life than our own. Learn from the hero’s journey, take the best of it, and push aside the rest for another day. Don’t judge what is right or wrong, judge what is practical and useful.
When will we ever really learn?
Thoughts for consideration: “I don’t know what I don’t know; but when I do know it, I’ll know what to do with it.”
Hint, it’s not a coincidence in the Cosmos.