The poet Muriel Rukeyser tells us that we need to “Pay attention to what they tell you to forget.” These are very wise words that far more people need to ponder upon, for that which we are told to forget, may indeed be that which we need to remember, instead. Look, it has to be said, that we find that not only do many leaders of society, desire compliance to their expectations from the public, but also the governance of that society typically has a strong tendency to want the population to conform to the expectations of that time as directed by that governance, of which, part of getting that conformance, is to bend or change the narrative to reflect that rather than to believe in our own thoughts and to remember the past of what we have seen with our very eyes, we should, instead, push that aside, and remember what our supposed superiors claim we need to remember in the way that they desire that we remember it as being, and thereby forget what they believe we should not retain in our memory, and for a certainty, to not disseminate such previous orthodoxies to others.
Indeed, part of manipulating anybody is to make them to doubt the validity of what they believe as being pertinent or correct, and to replace such with a different construct, which replaces our memory with something else, to thus change fundamentally what we previously knew to be true, to that which is, often at best, a distortion of the truth, or an outright fabrication. The objective by those that are in authority is to change history to favor their dishonest or distorted version, and to make all other versions not only to be irrelevant, but seem to be for those that will not relinquish such beliefs or memories, to make those people to be, in essence, in need of reform or viewed as an enemy of the state.
The people that remember the past as it was, are the same that keep those that would desire to erase or distort that past, honest. This signifies that each of us has a sacred duty to remember the past, not only to keep those that would change it, in check, but also as our way to demonstrate tribute to those that were part of that past but are no longer in this world, as our obligation and duty to do right by those that were part of our upbringing, as in mentors, family, and friends. We, are collectively, the guardians of the past, of which previous events of import, good and bad, are meant to be remembered, not only for any inspiration and wisdom that may have be imparted or learned, but also as a way and means to keep those that have unkept promises to correct or to acknowledge those previous misdeeds, so as to hold them to their word, for those that will not remember their needful history, are the very ones that must relive the same mistakes of the past, until they are rectified, and in doing this, they will not forget.