Response to 9/10/09 Class

The most interesting thing about the debate we had today in class was the view about how certain societies had different orientations toward history and how hard it is for us as Americans to understand why they have such strong feelings about their history. What I have noticed is that cultures that have very strong roots and that have had a strong historical emphasis on education seem to be more past-oriented. For example, the Jewish and Chinese culture groups; during WW2 both were persecuted and victims in the Holocaust and the Sino-Japanese war respectively. Both cultures feel very strongly about these events and put a lot of effort into making sure that stories and information about these events are spread. When someone publicly denies the Holocaust or the Nanjing Massacre, their is a very vocal response by people of these cultures, not to say that everyone in each culture is like this, but it is clear. Meanwhile, after having talked about these things with some European-American peers, they don't seem to understand why people are so oriented in the past. Americans are a future-oriented people, which makes sense considering our recent origins as a people, with only about 300 years of history, and the settling of immigrants who had a "can-do" attitude. I once talked to a person that stated something similar to: "well, these things happened 60 years ago, can't they get over it already?" Some of us just can't seem to understand why people have these strong opinions on the past or what it means to them due to our different cultural histories. Perhaps this orientation will shift over the coming centuries as our society and history evolves, or maybe we will always remain a future oriented society. I sort of rambled here, but I hope my point is clear.

-Jon Raouf