On the Human Need for Beauty

I’ve always had an interest in history because history is to a culture as memory is to each of us as individuals. A man with amnesia is a man without an identity. The same applies to a civilization. The past grounds us. It also shapes us. We make the future with our intellects and free will. But the past is implicit in our choosing and acting. It teaches us with its achievements. It also cautions us with its failures. This is why losing one’s memory is so perilous, and deliberately ignoring or subverting the memory of a culture is a special kind of theft.