We collude in our ignorance of pasts that will shame or wound us. Partial amnesia is necessary to ongoing life. We all crave a past we can love. Yet selective oblivion, whether imposed or self-induced, can cripple present action and future purpose. Those past-obsessed, like Simon Challenor, notably warp what they let themselves and others know.
Disaster often ensues.
It is baleful to be haunted by heritage, a realm beyond rational discourse. Strong feeling legitimates selfish folly, entitling us to plunder, hoard, and reshape the past in defiance of historical truth and of other claimants. The Serbs in Kosovo dwell on Kosovo through a timeless 14th-century lens. Too much information. No one here needs to be told of the perils of information expansion.