We are living history
How does our awareness of the historical significance of the present impact our actions?
Did you know that 2012 is now considered historical? Yes, that’s right. The line between present and history is drawn at the 10-year mark. This means that the 2008 financial crisis, election of Barack Obama, earthquake in Haiti, Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and that time when we thought that the Mayan calendar and Nostradamus were trying to tell us the world was ending, are all historical events. To be fair, these events were historic when they happened. But now, they are actually part of history. They are no longer part of the “present” and can officially be included in the latest edition of history textbooks.
A few years ago, I became fascinated with trying to determine what things I was experiencing during my lifetime will become the substance of future history books and documentaries. What will be the most significant technological evolution? (I think my grandma is correct that the computer in my pocket is the answer to that question). What will be the moments that define this era? (I would guess 9/11 and the Pandemic are probably up there). While sometimes the moments of historical significance go unremarked in their respective present, unlike the paintings of Van Gogh, we seem to have a general awareness of when things we are living through have a larger significance. I keenly remember being in a restaurant near the Harvard campus on a school trip to Boston the night President Obama was elected and knowing that it was a critical moment. However, being only 12 at the time, its historical significance was not something I fully comprehended until later.
Two weeks ago, I had the incredible good fortune to moderate a conversation between Civil Rights leaders Rabbi Israel Dresner and Dr. William G Anderson. As I sat there on the Zoom call, speaking to these two men, I kept thinking about how they were involved in a movement, and worked closely with people who I learned about in school. When they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, I kept wondering what they thought. Were they aware they were living in a historical moment? I imagine they did or hoped they were, even if they did not yet know the outcome.
How do we know when the present is historically significant? Do we have a premonition or innate ability to sense when this happens? There are moments when the world - or at the very least the West - stands still to watch. In my lifetime, this would be 9/11. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, everything stopped, and when it started moving again, nothing was the same. Then there are the moments that I assume will be historically notable but did not carry that weight in the present - like the assassination of Osama Bin Laden.
But maybe these are all the wrong questions. Because history records more than just the big moments, it also remembers the movements - social and political trends, fashion, music, thought, etc. While the big moments make us stop in our tracks, we live the movements every day. From Civil Rights to NOW to the Rodney King riots to what we have witnessed in the present with Me Too, Black Lives Matter and climate action, social movements have shaped our history as much as the cataclysmic moments. In this aspect, we find ourselves face to face with the question of whether we are on the right side of history - or will be on the right side of history.
Because only Disney villains have the self-awareness to know when they are being evil, the rest of us are left trying to make the best choice we can. How much do we account for history when making that choice? When Rabbi Dresner and Dr. Anderson organized for Rosa Parks not to give up her seat on the bus and marched alongside Martin Luther King, they had to have known that they were acting on the right side of history regardless of the outcome.
We are constantly bombarded with opinions presented as inalienable truths in our current social context. Knowing which direction the pendulum of history will swing is murkier than ever. Over the past five years, there has been a steady stream of movements to overhaul the system, all with positive and negative consequences. The nuance of these movements makes it difficult to predict how to be on the right side of the story future generations will read.
All social movements believe they are moving the world towards something better, and for some, time will prove this assertion true. Others will be swept up in the history that we unconsciously create daily. This is how we finally arrive at the question of how our awareness of the historical significance of the lives we are living influences our actions?
Earlier this year, in a letter I wrote to one of the administrators at my university about their inaction on Antisemitism, I said that I know I am on the right side of history in advocating for things to change. Now, I don’t really know this, I’m just guessing and hoping for the best. But it’s my belief in the truth of that supposition - that regardless of what people are saying, I am doing the right thing - that has kept me pushing forward through the worst moments. Similarly, our belief that we are on the right side of history has led thousands of young people to protest for the sake of the climate and the sanctity of Black lives.
Every day, we have the possibility of doing something that makes history. When I say this, I want to stress that I am by no means suggesting that anyone go out and shoot Franz Ferdinand. History begins 10 years in the past; it is so close to the present we are living that if we stretch our arms enough, we can almost touch it. The choices that we make in the present day perpetually carry the weight of the history they can influence.
History is living and breathing, and we are all a part of it - capable of directing, influencing, and tampering with it. It is worthwhile remembering, that by our mere existence, we are creating history. What story do we want to tell?