Comment by lo_zamoyski

A people cannot understand themselves without understanding their past. We not only become small-minded, parochial, and petty by forgetting our past. We forget who we are. We become enslaved to passing fads and silly nonsense of the day instead of aiming for the eternal. We lose perspective and become pusillanimous, obsessed with ourselves while remaining ignorant of our place in the tapestry of time. By forgetting the received tradition, we forfeit a goldmine of wisdom developed and communicated over the ages that we, too, should embrace and develop. We exclude ourselves from a dialogue with our ancestors who have much to share with us, from whom we have much to learn, and whose efforts we should continue, refining, correcting, expanding, elaborating what came before. We should engage with the endoxa of the ages. That doesn't mean thoughtless acceptance of a calcified mass, but entering into relationship with a living inheritance with the requisite humility.

We have chosen foolishness and mediocrity, and spiritual and intellectual poverty, savagery over humanity. And in our foolishness we cannot help but walk in circles, repeating the same errors, because we do not remember where we have already been. It is the story of modern philosophy which rhymes with and echoes the errors of the presocratic philosophers.