“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
Isaac Newton
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana
These two quotes encapsulate how our human species differs from all other forms of life – the ability to learn from the past, to draw on the benefits of our inheritance. It’s about how each generation can make its contribution without starting afresh each time. It's about how we hand down what we have built up, so that the precious thread of progress is maintained.
We often speak of inheritance as a financial matter in this commentary, but capital is much more than a value of assets. It is knowledge and tradition, construction and awareness. It is accumulated reason, the outcome of challenging thoughts and experiences over centuries: that’s what we look to hand down from generation to generation, and if it breaks down too fundamentally we could all too easily slip back to the dark ages. Consider the fall of the Roman Empire, how centuries of civilization were lost in just a short period.
So in this commentary and as we move forward into the new year, we reflect on that contrast between building on, as opposed to being weighed down by, the past.
Speaking of being weighed down by the past, there’s no better example than the conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell on 29th December. Her life story was well summarised in a BBC piece, telling how her father Robert Maxwell, himself scarred by his family's WWII experience, had taken advantage of all around him before apparently taking his own life in 1991.
Each generation has the opportunity either to learn anew from the past, or to copy its mistakes. The pace of change is such that it forces us to do more of the former and less of the latter - hence far fewer young people take enjoyment from blood sports, and we’re swiftly learning that we must take more care of our planet.
But in order to react to the mistakes of the past we must know what they were and how they came about. There is an increasing challenge to maintain the store of accessible knowledge in our digital society: even family photograph albums are fast falling out of use. But what will happen to all those electronic records and messages held in the cloud when we die?
As we move into 2022 there will be much opportunity to learn from the past, as we celebrate the Queen’s platinum year. Hers has been an extraordinary generation: born in the ashes of WWI, experiencing the Great Depression, another World War, intense cultural change, global movement on a scale which makes nonsense of borders, the technological revolution – the change they've had to cope with far exceeds all else before, and all else since.
So if you have children or grandchildren, how about a New Year's resolution to draw together the threads of your family history over the past century, and construct the story in a way from which younger generations can learn? Have you researched your family tree and explored all the interconnections? Are you aware of how the experiences of your ancestors changed their lives – and yours?
There are many useful apps such as Ancestry and Family Tree Maker, but don't just leave it there in electronic format - produce them in hard copy, write some memoirs of your own, complete with pointers for where we've not got things right in the past and must learn for the future, in the interests of contributing to a better world.
Each year at this time we have the opportunity to start afresh - let's give thanks for that. But we also have the obligation to build on the past for a better future, not to weigh down that future with our past mistakes.
Gavin Oldham OBE
Share Radio