The craziness of what is going on in the U.S. today is on my mind. What got me started specifically was the public lynch mobs rioting and protesting who want to punish people who are not guilty of any crime.
I’m a biologist by education. I accept that evolution occurs. However, biologically there isn’t much evolution or change that can occur in a large population of organisms. Humans are living organisms. But at least in humans our learning ability allows us to have a culture do and can change. This also got me to thinking about a plaque I saw on a wall once. It said “forgive and remember”. I think I get it now.
Regarding the past. Be angry, be mad, that is okay, so long as you move forward from it, forgive yourself and forgive others, just REMEMBER IT! Do not repeat it. It is, what it is. It can’t be changed. You don’t get to go back and “do over” on things that already happened. You do get the chance to make it different the next time a similar thing comes along. YOU can choose to react differently, choose to make a different choice, choose to participate or not. Lots of folks think history is stupid, learning it is a waste of time. I don’t. Why? If you don’t know what led up to stupidity (or greatness) how can you avoid stupidity or not avoid greatness in the future.
Anyway, back to the original thought line… thinking of history in terms of years is pretty unbelievable. If I say in 800 A.D. xxy happened or in year 10 B.C. zxy happened it doesn’t seem too real. But I knew my grandpa and he saw and told me about things that happened when he was young, that’s easy to believe. What about his grandpa, and his, and his, and that chain of people is much easier to comprehend. And you know what? in that chain of grandpa’s, suddenly we are at a time when something very important happened. The government at that time bent to a lynch mob of public will and executed a guy who wasn’t guilty of any legally defined crime. That government created a situation that transformed the world and led to the demise of their own country and affected the entire world for ages to come.
We certainly can learn from history.
While our biological drives haven’t changed or evolved, our learning and culture has. We can choose to remember and not repeat the past. We can choose to forgive those who came before and remember what came before so we don’t repeat it. But we have to CHOOSE to not repeat it.
Think about this. Look at this guy’s theory on if one elderly person alive touched and transferred their wisdom to a younger person before they died. Follow the chain of people backwards in time. Time is much smaller than you think.
13 Generations
Free Form Quilts 
Another though. that culture which lynched the poor guy was into stoning and crucifying people for their crimes. That culture still does it today. Frightening that they haven’t learned or moved on or developed and changed their culture. They really need to Forgive and Remember.
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