Thinking about Time, History, and the Self, Part 2

In part 1 I gave a thumb sketch of my own movement in terms of understanding my relation to the past. This reflection was prompted by two things: One was following a link from the Anglobapitst to Jonathan Stegals blog and reading his reflection on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall He was six when the Berlin wall fell, and 9/11 was the moment of his conscientization. I was struck how the two events reverberate in him and myself differently. The other was President Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Merkel of Germany jointly laying a wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France The article points out that both Merkel and Sarkozy were born after WWII stating that they did not have the emotional animosity of the generations before. The article went on to state that 25 years ago a similar joint commemoration of war dead of WWI at Verdun ended poorly.

What came together as I reflected on the joint celebration of Germany and France of the end of WWI and Stegals post on 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, was how little time has passed, how much has changed and to what degree we are still even with all the changes living out consequences and living into things set in motion even before the events commemorated last week. At one time I thought 20 years was a long time, but then I was 20 when I thought that so 20 years was my entire lifetime. The fall of the Berlin wall doesn't feel that distant or removed. Even 40 years ago or 50 doesn't seem that long ago to me any more. Yet,I am also confronted with how much has happened: Germany and France in my parent's lifetime have gone from bitter enemies to Germany taking part in France's Armistice Day ceremony, at the Arc de Triomphe. Enough has changed, according to the article, so that the events of the two "world wars" (specifically WWI) have a different resonance for Sarkozy and Merkel than it did for their predecessors, and this is true for much of the electorate. Yet, for both countries the end of WWI is a significant and enduring event, that potentially holds meaning far beyond a letting go of national animosities and hostilities.

Like Sarkozy and Merkel for whom the two World Wars have different resonances, emotions and meanings than there predecessors, I saw how this was true for Stegal, and myself for two events The fall of the Berlin wall and 9/11. Stegal seemed to have to struggle to find a reason to remember the fall of the Berlin wall, due to his experience of 9/11. Stegal's opinions are not that varied from mine, but it struck me that it was odd that he had to come to the conclusion that the fall of the Berlin wall was worth remembering. I didn't even ask if it was worth remembering, though I did ask the more critical question of how we were remembering the event. I was tempted here to see a parallel between the fall of the Berlin wall for me and 9/11 for Stegal. Yet I this this would not be accurate. The crystallizing "event" for me is more what occurred over time after the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The "event" was watching (even under a Democratic president) American imperial policy both politically and economically expand more or less unchecked in the 90's, based on a triumphalist understanding of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and totalitarian communism. However this means that there wasn't an event that jolted me to consciousness, rather it was tracing various strains and continuities out from the "Fall of the Berlin Wall" that was my own conscientization (among other things) and informed my response to 9/11.

Stegal's post seems to be attempting to trace out lines of "effect" or continuity and continued meaning from the fall of the Berlin wall as significant event. But these continuities and lines of effect don't simply stop at this or that particular event. It seems to me difficult to mark off events cleanly one from another. Though I will admit that in part this view is influenced by how my world view was formed in part around the end of the Cold War, which didn't end suddenly and wasn't a clearly defined singular event but a series of slowly unfolding events that cascaded not only into the end of the cold war but into 9/11 and the "War on Terror". France's Armistice Day ceremony reminds me also that what we are facing now has its roots in that time as well, a war that was in some sense a consequence of American and European dividing up the world into colonies and spheres of influence. We are still living with these realities they are not simply past.

Changing comment Moderation

Well I have been getting a great deal of comment spam on this blog for the past few months so I am reinstating certain measures to prevent this. From now on to comment you'll need to prove you are a human by typing in the security word. If you wish to comment on a post that is more than 2 weeks old (much of the spam has been on older posts.) your comment will have to be first approved by me before it is posted.

LEK

Thinking about Time, History and the Self, Part 1

Time and history seems to be that which isolates us and alienates us from those who have come before us, or at least this continues to be the continuing consensus among all this talk about the Future of Christianity and this Great Emergence thing we apparently have found ourselves in the midst. I get it, at one time I too felt that those who came before couldn't understand what I am thinking and what my generation were experiencing. The Boomers and my parents of the Baby Bust generation couldn't understand. I didn't even attempt to think about my Grandparents or anyone before them. Ironically I suppose I have always been fascinated by history and between thinking I'd be an engineer and finding a call to the pastorate I thought of becoming an historian. However, history was that very distant past that somehow related to my present but it was difficult to explain how or why. Though if I had been honest history had its appeal in what was foreign and without direct relation to me and the time in which I lived. My parents were an odd combination of in my time and emissaries from a different and foreign time- they told the family stories, stories that made it so clear that times had changed. I have a vague recollection of seeing my mother in a picture from when she was young, and asking who that was in the picture and the answer sent me off wondering what it was like to be a child in a time I did not know or understand: my interest in History was born. My present was real, their past an irrelevant oddity that was fascinating.

As I have moved from my 20's through my thirties and now entering my forties this year, this view of the past, and of preceding generations has changed. First, I don't feel alienated from my parents. I have come/am coming to see that Boomers are just people like my own generation trying to figure out their way in a culture that prizes the future over the past. It seems to me that such prizing makes it difficult to find ones footing in the present, as one is hardly encouraged to stand still let alone take time to gain ones bearings by look back along the path we have come. Boomer's and Xers and now Millenials or Generation Y are all attempting the same thing in ways that make sense in the face of our obsession with giving minute periods of time epic and millennial significance. We abandoned at some point in our western/American cultural consciousness, grand meaning and then suddenly our smallness must become grand and cosmic, every 10 to 20 years must represent cosmic shifts that separate us completely from all that has gone before. I am coming to see this belief in the absolutely meaningful quality of change and flux as part of our coming to grips with the world as beings that come into existence at a particular point in time. The longer I lived the more my parents made sense to me. Somewhere between 25 and 32 or so, I became friends with my parents as I realized that I owed a great debt to them for who I was (granted this is in part due to the fact that they were and are genuinely good parents) even when my perspectives and reality differed from theirs it had its roots in their perspectives and reality. Our differences have become less significant, our connection and my connection with the past has become more obvious, change and flux are real but seem to be that which is less real than connections and continuity. My time, my self seems less like a standard for judging and gaining a sense of the world, and more simply a vantage point from which to seek to understand a narrative of which we of this time are only one brief chapter. I think I am more like other human beings that have come before us than I am differ from them, though I do differ, just as I differ from my parents, as would be obvious if one simply sees us together. Yet, even my body is marked as much with similarities as differences. This journey towards this recognition perhaps began when at 24 one morning I looked in the mirror having grown a beard and found my dad staring back at me from my own face!