We live in a technology driven society built upon the great minds, trials and errors and histories of the human race. We have everything, and there is little left to want. But with all that we have there is one great shortcoming, we forget! For every advancement, every ease, every single aspect of our lives moving forward we travel further from our humble beginnings and much is lost to the hustle and bustle of progress.
Unlike the mechanisms that drive us forward today, we have real history, a hard fought history that demands an emotional and mental awareness from its benefactors. An awareness derived from gratitude of all things, ideas, peoples and places that have brought the human race to this great state of enlightenment. The very enlightenment that drives us further from clear understanding and knowledge of how truly great we are and have become because of our history.
When the heart stops beating, and the body fails, the mind’s memory, stories and loves are lost forever. We can not reboot, restore or replace what is lost. That is why historical societies, commissions with active members, writers passionate and committed, and professionals dedicated to preserving are imperative. It is our duty to preserve and honor the monuments, buildings, memories and papers that testify to the continuum of our towns, our communities, our peoples and our nation for the generations to follow.
Herodotus, Ptolemy I, Theodore Roosevelt, and Christopher Browning had an extraordinary vision and a capacity for detail and perspective. For all their wisdom, their highest achievement is so memorable that we are forever in their debt. They wrote things down; they did not leave history to be lost forever. Without their writings we would have no permanent record of events. Oral histories have built traditions, maintained legends and kept close the lives of our ancestors with much fondness, but too much room for error and exaggerations.
We must capture history and commit it to paper, protect structures that speak loudly of days past and retain documents in a manner that they may never be damaged. It is not too late to start preserving history, on a small or grand scale or to form a historical societies that do so with integrity, strength and iron will. Decades and centuries from now, our successors will want to know what life in this decade, this century was like, what buildings were lost, the politics of our time, the schools and the religions and the struggles we as communities and as a nation faced, overcame or succumbed to. They will want to know because these will become foundations on which the next generations will build upon, will look to and will we disappoint them, NAY, instead we will lay the blueprint, the foundation for a lineage of pride.
The answer is clear, the mission is clear, it is concrete as the revolutionaries of old: We must preserve, we must protect and never forget. History must be preserved to continuously seek betterment and to grow on the wisdom of our History and to have a Jolly time saving the memories of our great nation!
Our History is a treasure hunt if you may, a new age Holy Grail and an immeasurable resource to the future. There are untold riches to discover in the documents and in the relics forgotten in attics and basements, in the buildings we preserve, and from the minds of those that join us to share a past we do not remember. History inherently is not designed to be pretty or cater to the sensitive; it is a reminder of all that is ugly and all that was beautiful and victorious. History is the DNA of societies and the heartbeat that drives civilization forward that is why we must preserve History great and small!
Remarkably Relevant 