Historicity

After helping the folks out with an errand and having lunch I visited a nearby museum. It's been around a long time and I remember going to it when I was young.

One of the exhibits is a collection of different pottery vessels from native tribes dating back hundreds of years -- in a couple of cases probably a round thousand. It's a good focus for some thinking and reflection. Those people, if they'd been choosing what should be around a thousand years after them would probably not have picked bowls or pitchers, but that's what made it. When I wonder what from today will be around in 3020, I figure it will probably wind up being something as ordinary as a bowl. Granted, we've greatly expanded our catalog of useless things -- hey, Twitter, how ya doing? -- but we still have ordinary stuff.

History is worth reflecting on. Especially because when you don't know it you're liable to say something stupid like "Donald Trump is our first racist president" and ignore presidents who were literal slave owners and another who actually re-segregated the federal government. Or that in the case of African-Americans "in America and in society there ain't been no damn movement for us" literally one week after paying tribute to a civil rights leader who suffered a fractured skull as a part of a movement to end segregation and was later elected to Congress.

Who cares what happened in the past anyway, right?