“Each civilization, each nation, each family, each profession, each sex and each class has its own history. Humans have so far been interested mainly in their own private roots, and have therefore never claimed the whole of the inheritance into which they were born, the legacy of everybody’s past experience. Each generation searches only for what it thinks it lacks, and recognizes only what it knows already.”
-
Working on it...
-
Working on it...
-
Working on it...
Reflection Questions
Theodore Zeldin's quote highlights the idea that we often focus on our individual histories and experiences, neglecting the wealth of knowledge and wisdom that comes from collective histories. This raises important questions for self-reflection and exploration.
- How has my understanding of history been influenced by my personal experiences and biases?
- In what ways have I sought out and embraced perspectives and histories different from my own?
- How can I broaden my historical knowledge to encompass the diverse range of experiences and legacies that make up our shared human history?
- What insights or lessons might I be missing out on by only focusing on my own personal, familial, or cultural history?
- How can I actively work towards recognizing and valuing the histories and experiences of others, beyond my own limited scope of knowledge?
Similar quotes
“Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted”, for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each other’s sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.”
“We are each born into a situation—a particular body (its race, sex, health...), a set of ancestors, a community, a nation—and born into the stories told of each of these.”
“It was him, it was always him, they only needed to stand there with their feet buried into the muddy moss and look at each other; to feel each other. Time stopped, movement disappeared and it was both the beginning of everything and the end of everything else. They had each other and there was no name, no title to it other than they just had each other. There was no necessity to be practical, what they had and what they were, was of their own and in their own and I think nothing in the world could have made Lucy happier than to have what they had, to be what they were.”
“Past humanity is not only implicit in each new man born but is contained in him. Humanity is an ever-widening spiral and life is the beam that plays briefly on each succeeding ring. All humanity from its beginning to its end is already present but the beam has not yet played beyond you.”
“Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.”