So if you have a walk through town, you will become aware that you walk in human history. We at the end of the 20th century, are not the first people living and working here. We are building on the shoulders of what previous generations have achieved. That does not mean that we have to copy what they did, or that we cannot go beyond what they discovered. Life goes on.
New ideas develop.
New insights come through and we can make progress. But by the same token, it is good for us to have a positive historical awareness. Especially immigrants who enter a country where they are rather free to shape things according to their own ideas, run the risk of thinking that they are the first ones to invent all kind of things. They live in a new world, which they can shape in their own way. This situation however, can be rather deceptive.