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01 August 2010
There’s a conundrum passage in the Old Testament that says, “you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget.” Amalek attacked the fleeing Jews as they left Egypt and went after the young, old and infirm, inflicting as much damage as they could, ruthlessly and viciously. But the conundrum is: how do you blot out the memory and not forget at the same time?
There’s been a lot written about this biblical event and you can easily follow the story on Wikipedia or some other site if you’d like but I’m borrowing the passage tonight to express a real hope that my children can somehow achieve blotting out a memory and not forget at the same time. I hope that their history teachers don’t ruin their simple naïve beliefs and that they can also learn what humanity is capable of at its worst so that they don’t allow it in their time.
If it’s not too late to make it clear I’m referring to my recent experience while watching Invictus, the 2009 movie directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. It’s the story of the 1995 World Rugby match held in South Africa that reunited the country, at least spiritually and temporarily after years of bitter racial division and apartheid.
My children, ages 7, 10 and 13 kept asking me to explain why it was that the blacks and whites had been so angry with each other. Even as I explained it they still didn’t get it, they couldn’t conceive of the concept that whites in South Africa treated blacks as if they were a lower life form.
My kids asked who Nelson Mandela was and in the scene where they showed his former cell they asked, ‘how could a human being live in such a small place for 27 years? How can people do that to someone for just speaking for his ideals?’
I don’t know if I did a good job of explaining world history any more than explaining Rugby rules, and I don’t think they ever really believed me on either. They seem to believe that people should be good to each other regardless of race and that I was somehow getting the story wrong.
These are kids whose grandmother, my mother, thought saying ‘colored’ was being nice, who themselves say ‘African American’ as easily as my generation said ‘black’.
So, teachers, that’s what I want them to know. They can go on being ignorant of the history of racial segregation and bullying that still continues around the world, that’s barely a generation away in America. A part of history that is to them conceptually unbelievable and belongs to a period of life that needs to be blotted from the memory of a good people.
And the kids, mine and yours, need to not forget at the same time, not forget that ignorance, bias and hatred is a possibility in any nation, any people who indulge their fears more than their fairness, who succumb to a mob mentality rather than their own good conscience and that it’s happened in real life.
They need to not forget that even though it doesn’t make sense, it did happen and can, if we sleep, happen again. I know that Santayana said 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’ and would get the answer right on a quiz show, but I also know think of the phrase ‘Who put that silly idea into your head?’
Maybe ignorance is blissful living? Maybe we can blot ignorance out of memory and not forget it at the same time. We’ve already started this, the world is changing, maybe not fast enough for some but for those of us who work in the world of personal growth, any change can be good, even small changes.
And our kids are escaping a kind of slavery we’ve come to accept as part of life; let's hope they're not attacked while they're still weak.