Our Collective Selective Memory
Being honest about the past is the only way to move forward
In Embracing Curiosity, I step away from writing about travel to comment on the bigger journey of life, exploring my faith and politics with curiosity and nuance.
Films and television shows have a special way of reminding us that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
My husband and I enjoy good historical dramas of pretty much every kind. We raced through Band of Brothers and once got HBO for the sole purpose of watching The Pacific. We watched John Adams, even though we had to slog through the last couple of episodes. We faithfully watched every episode of The Americans and spent part of a Black Friday shopping date watching Lincoln in the theater. If it’s quality historical entertainment, we’re usually game.
Most recently, we enjoyed a date night to watch Elvis.
When it comes to biopics, Elvis may not appear to be on the top of our viewing list. After all, neither of us are Elvis fans and we probably have spent more of our lives mocking the popularity of the “King” than actually paying attention to the impact he had on the entire music industry. But there is something about the story of Elvis that highlights some of the most tumultuous periods of American history in the 20th century. That turmoil gets a significant highlight through Baz Luhrmann’s signature storytelling and blending of musical styles and periods.
I walked away from the film realizing how little I understood the “King of Rock and Roll” and how much the mid-20th century defined him. Watching how he came of age in the Black neighborhoods of Memphis, I realized that he was more influenced by his friendship with BB King than he was by White, Southern country music. I noted how he grieved the deaths of JFK, MLK, and Bobby Kennedy, deaths that appeared to temporarily dash the dreams of effective change for millions of Americans of all races. He challenged decency laws by feeling the music so deeply that his onstage dancing had girls screaming before the Beatles ever landed on American shores.
Both he and the current events that shaped him would leave a permanent mark on American history. He died two years before my husband and I were born, but I often have to remind myself that our parents brought us into a world that was still on fire.
The scars left by Watergate remained. The Iran hostage crisis was unresolved. Gas shortages led to long lines at the pump. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan and twenty years later our peers would be sent to clean up the mess we created when Americans got involved. We were still living through a Cold War that appeared to have no signs of ending. The Three Mile Island incident warned of the potential dangers of nuclear energy, dangers that would be realized when the Soviets covered up the Chernobyl disaster seven years later.
Sometimes it’s good to have a reminder that the world has always been a mixture of mess and progress, and never has this been more important to my generation than it is now.
We are the generation that saw the Cold War end when we were children and we were sent to fight a new war on terror as we entered adulthood. For many of us, our first presidential election resulted in the loser of the popular vote becoming the president and then we watched it happen again on a much larger scale sixteen years later. We have seen the first Black American president, the legalization of same-sex marriage, and now the overturning of Roe. As elementary students we watched the Challenger explode and our children will watch the first woman walk on the moon in 2024. We watched loved ones or even ourselves lose homes during the housing market crash of 2007, and we’ve witnessed the struggle of younger siblings and peers who now struggle to purchase their own homes in an inflated market. We’ve seen gas prices fluctuate all over the map since September 11, 2001, and have never once seen oil companies pay the price. We’ve felt the heat of a warming planet and wonder what kind of world we are leaving to our children. We’ve lived through a global pandemic and have witnessed the lightning speed with which scientific advancement responded.
Most importantly, in the last two years, we have watched the greatest threat to our democratic republic that has been seen since 1859 and the denial of that threat by loved ones, colleagues, neighbors, and even our elected officials.
And yet, we are not in the worst of times. We are just in the worst of times as we remember it.
There has never been a “good old days.” The fantasy 1950s of Andy Griffith fame ignore the realities for anyone but white, middle-class men. During that period of imaginary paradise, little Black girls had to be escorted by National Guardsmen so they could attend school, women were still excluded from most financially lucrative professions, and diseases like polio shut down communities and destroyed bodies. While Happy Days makes the 1950s look like a fun time for all, those of us who have studied history have no desire to return to that “golden” era.
Benjamin Franklin once said, “The Golden Age was never the present age.” This might be an important idea to keep in mind since we like to look back at our Founding Fathers as living in a mythical golden era in American politics, before the two-party system took over, before all American citizens had the right to vote, and before the divisive invention of social media.
Kaitlyn Schiess made an interesting observation on a recent episode of Holy Post when she commented that people in her generation (20-somethings and younger) have never known a country where everyone was peacefully singing “Kumbaya.” They have never seen a “golden age” in American politics. They have never seen a “golden age” in the American church. They have nothing to compare our current age to and therefore are primarily interested in just making things better.
The reality is we look to the past with such certainty because we have access to the whole narrative. We don’t pay attention to the decade or more of turmoil following the Revolutionary War because we know that what followed was a Bill of Rights, the peaceful transfer of power after an eight-year presidency by George Washington, and a series of constitutional changes that kept our country going for nearly 250 years. We don’t remember the very real physical cost for women fighting for the right to vote because we’ve had the right for 100 years and we’ve never had to think about it. We joke about the mess created by the 18th Amendment because we know that it was a failed constitutional experiment that was quickly repealed by the 21st Amendment.
Like many, I’m honestly tired of living in unprecedented times, but aren’t all periods of history truly unprecedented? One voice I’ve really appreciated during this time has been John Green. He is spending more time recently sharing insightful comments on Instagram to highlight how our current time echos other periods of American history. As a writer and the face of Crash Course History, he has an unnervingly calm approach to discussing the times we are living in right now. While his writing makes it abundantly clear that he sees the seriousness of the issues facing us today, he also puts it into the perspective of history. We are not fighting our current troubles alone and history presents us with the lessons that we need to move our current battles forward.
This is why I love history and believe that studying and understanding it is so important: history gives us the insight that we need to move forward. It shows us that there never was a “good old days” but instead that each generation has its own struggles and challenges. We cannot look at the past with selective memory but instead need to approach it holistically, with an understanding that the past echoes back to us in the present, giving us the tools we need to move the needle of change forward.
And yes, we can even learn those lessons by watching movies about Rock and Roll legends.
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Really engaging piece today, Sarah!
Depending on your viewpoint, it's always either "the best of times" or "the worst of times". Back in the 80s we were always on the "brink of nuclear war" and the world was ending, so I take today's doses of doom and gloom with a grain of salt.