The Issue of Forgetting

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Lawrence Weschler’s A Miracle, A Universe argues against a society forgetting the hardships and injustices of the past and living in a state of blissful ignorance, suggesting instead that these issues must not be removed from public consciousness; that they should be talked about and remedied as much as possible.

I would like to echo Weschler’s feelings about mass forgetting using my personal experience growing up in a society that refused to speak about its past and under a government that still discourages them to. The situation does not quite match the South American cases we have looked at in class, but I feel it could provide an interesting perspective on what forgetting can do to a society years later.

In Lebanon, the country maintains a silence over the civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990, and the result is a stubborn resentment over the atrocities of that conflict. Many Christians resent Palestinians (and those that fought with them) for massacring Christian villages up and down the country, while many Muslims and Palestinians resent the Christian party as traitors for its brief alliance with Israel that allowed Israel to enter the country and wipe out the PLO, massacring Palestinians and bombing major cities in the process.

After the conclusion of the civil war, the government didn’t do anything to give either side any closure, preferring instead to discourage talk of the conflict (for example by not teaching it in history classes) and making talk of the civil war a taboo. The government forced the people to forget when they didn’t want to, and the result, to this day, is a community divided along sectarian lines, silently resenting the hardships they were put through and the war crimes committed against them – all the while holding onto their hatred of those responsible.

In Lebanon, the policy of forgetting the past has broken a people that could have been saved with a sustained attempt at reconciliation, and so I totally share Weschler’s opinion: divisions created in times of crisis need to be fixed through acceptance and reconciliation, and forgetting doesn’t help.

9 thoughts on “The Issue of Forgetting”

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  8. I would say that Weschler’s ideas should at least be attempted in every country, and although the success achieved through them will certainly vary, I think they are necessary for a society to move on from a traumatic event.

    Having said this, I think that the timing of any reconciliation attempts (between victims and aggressors or people and government) should vary greatly depending on the case. Some situations, perhaps such as Chile (or even the French revolution), are better suited to immediate acts to justice or punishment. In other cases (especially cases of violence and conflict between the people – such as with Lebanon), however, I think the people are better able to reconcile after their tempers have hopefully cooled with time.

  9. Your example of Lebanon makes me think about how prevalent the issue of forgetting really is. This debate is not confined to rare cases or exceptions; rather, it seems to be pervasive throughout even very stable societies and governments. I wonder if you think that Weschler’s idea can/should be applied in every country where there is some form of state conflict or hostility, or whether there should be some variance depending on what most of society seems to want.

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