The throbbing sounds and breakneck pace of '90s communications and entertainment threaten to drown out the strains of an older music.
Historical consciousness is to civilized society what memory is to individual identity.
One cannot say who or what one is without some selective retention of experience and source of continuity. One cannot learn, use language, pass on knowledge, raise offspring, or even dwell in society without the aid of memory. Without memory there are no workable rules of conduct, no standard of justice, no basis for restraining passions, no sense of the connection between an action and its consequences. A culture without memory will necessarily be barbarous. The study of the past should cause us to recognize the ways that the past has authority over us.