Does a society have an obligation to preserve (or at least respect) individual contribution, impact, or memory?
The Time Traveler in H. G. Wells' The Time Machine returns from his trip to a future full of degraded human being with little or no rationality and a total disregard for past triumphs of mankind. He questions whether the writings he slaves over and the inventions he labors to create can ever have a true impact. He nearly despairs that life (as the Spanish dramatist would propose) is a dream after all and that the works of man are futile and ephemeral in the final analysis.
In Orwell's 1984, the society under Big Brother not only accepts the decay of individual memory through time, they systematically erase individual, historical impact of those who are eliminated from society. The main character's job is to rewrite news articles to eliminate the names and rebellious actions of those who have been killed. As he does so, he suppresses feelings of guilt by arguing that he doesn't even know if the article being changed was true in the first place. Replacing one lie with another is not a violation of integrity.
Many poets sought to preserve themselves and others through their art, seeking a more permanent memorial than a name written fancifully in the sand. However, as Ephesians reminds us, that too will pass.
The concept of memory also reminds me of a wonderful Elie Wisel speech on that topic. In it he proposes:
Without memory, our existence would be barren and opaque, like a prison cell into which no light penetrates; like a tomb which rejects the living. . . . it is memory that will save humanity. For me, hope without memory is like memory without hope.
Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future. Does this mean that our future can be built on a rejection of the past? Surely such a choice is not necessary. The two are incompatible. The opposite of the past is not the future but the absence of future; the opposite of the future is not the past but the absence of past. The loss of one is equivalent to the sacrifice of the other.
This returns us to the question at hand. What is our responsibility to those who have gone on before us? Must we remember? Must we preserve their impact? Must we protect the memory of individuals or only of the great men and the larger movements of social change? Should only the memory of the good be treasured or also the foreboding presence of past evils? Is memory the responsibility of each man, each culture, each country or no one at all?
Thoughts?
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