We need to be careful when we say, "We are our history," to not confuse this with being stuck in the past. The historical flow is important to connect to because it is the dynamic of genesis from which we all emerge, but we have to look at it dialectically, because history is a process of continuity and change. It is a unity on a dialectical level of continuity and change, and so it is a flow. We would be better served by seeing "we are our history" in terms of flows, in terms of intertwining ribbons and helices of turbulent streams, as can swirl through the vortices of a river, in which there is a level of connection to the past and also discontinuity, and that flow is important. We don't have to be just like our ancestors, even though having a connection to them can be meaningful. We don't need to freeze our connection at a particular, historical stage, say, the Iron Age. Those people themselves looked back to their ancestors and all the way to how they understood genesis from the very source. That understanding of what source is will change over time.
We honor on the mythopoetic level, of course, the story of fire and ice coming together in the great abyss, and forming the substrate of the world, and the bedrock of reality (Jormungrund) from which the Gods made the world, and there is something poignant to being in touch with that folk grasp, that imaginal connection. At the same time, our minds have expanded and stretched out, and through utilizing science, we have greater understanding of our genesis from the source, through evolution, and through the very process of the formation of matter at the beginning of the universe. And that vision itself will be expanded and revolutionized throughout time, so that at some point in time, our present understanding, though there will still be truths that cohere from it, will be seen in the same light as we might look back upon the previous understandings of our ancestors. So unless we are committed to being reactionaries, "we are our history" does not mean that we are not also our future. We are both. We are streamings in time that have the possibility to weave the best of the past into the excitement of the future, and it's the interplay between those two processes, of carrying forward that which was good in the past, and often in a transformative way, that matters. Sometimes it can't stay in the same form ; it must be transformed. But so that something of its essence stays with us. We don't want to turn the world back to medieval villages. There's little about that that was paradisical. We must move forward, but we will, if we are wise, take the best of the past in a transformative way and integrate it into our flowing-into and creation of the future.
We honor on the mythopoetic level, of course, the story of fire and ice coming together in the great abyss, and forming the substrate of the world, and the bedrock of reality (Jormungrund) from which the Gods made the world, and there is something poignant to being in touch with that folk grasp, that imaginal connection. At the same time, our minds have expanded and stretched out, and through utilizing science, we have greater understanding of our genesis from the source, through evolution, and through the very process of the formation of matter at the beginning of the universe. And that vision itself will be expanded and revolutionized throughout time, so that at some point in time, our present understanding, though there will still be truths that cohere from it, will be seen in the same light as we might look back upon the previous understandings of our ancestors. So unless we are committed to being reactionaries, "we are our history" does not mean that we are not also our future. We are both. We are streamings in time that have the possibility to weave the best of the past into the excitement of the future, and it's the interplay between those two processes, of carrying forward that which was good in the past, and often in a transformative way, that matters. Sometimes it can't stay in the same form ; it must be transformed. But so that something of its essence stays with us. We don't want to turn the world back to medieval villages. There's little about that that was paradisical. We must move forward, but we will, if we are wise, take the best of the past in a transformative way and integrate it into our flowing-into and creation of the future.
