This is part of our identity problem. No history.

“For without some sense of the past the future can be only loneliness: amnesia is a solitary affliction.”
                     ― John Lewis Gaddis

I have been thinking about this quote off and on for a week. Postmodernists do not believe this. They do not believe we can ever really do history. And for years I felt some kinship with them. It is not age that has changed me, it is history itself, the history that I have lived through, seen, heard, read about, witnessed, and then some, and how it is now written or interpreted. Yes, I, me, the Leftist person in the room. It is a bold thought to write this, not only this quote from Gaddis, but from me, to come to a quaint understanding. How do historians map the past? And why? Can we ever really know anything about the past? Gaddis is not a man I would have looked to, for answers years previously. He is not one of them at all. The fact that I have read him now and that he totally challenges me is also frightening. I have much to think about and I only know one thing. We should teach more history. We should look to history. Faulkner was right. The past is always present. omg....