A controversy has arisen at my college, one that raises an interesting question (above the din of the usual freedom of speech v. standards of decency thing): what should we remember?

     Recent events run something like this (bear with me).  On Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) a group of students placed flyers on dormitory doors with pictures and names and the causes of death of Holocaust victims.  This led to some protest on the part of some students who felt that the flyers should not have been posted on doors (invasion of personal space) and/or the pictures of victims (in everyday, normal poses; not in concentration camps, etc.) were disturbing.  This then led to further student comment, some of which produced complaints that the Holocaust should not be singled out for particular commemoration.  One argument was that there have been many terrible slaughters in human history (think: Great Leap Forward), why commemorate this one in particular?  It is another point, however, that really caught my eye: why should a person be expected to commemorate an event that did not happen in his or her lifetime and did not involve any member of his or her family? 

      Thus, implicitly: What should we remember?

      The whole thing quickly became muddied when another student, framing herself as an avant-garde performance artist of sorts, decided to satirize the Yom HaShoah posters with other posters that, yes you guessed it, seemed to be commemorating the good works of Hitler.  She copied the design template of the original posters and put them up on dormitory doors.  So, now the campus is swept up in the whole Hitler thing.  But I want to get back to that other question: what should we remember?

      When the whole thing started, I thought to myself, "wow, do we really have to justify the commemoration of the Holocaust?"  It is just so obvious to me that the nature (its brutal industrial efficiency), the scale, the historical positioning (ending, really, whatever 19th century European optimism about modernity that was not already extinguished by WWI), and the American political-cultural significance (creating the ultimate justification for the "good war") of the Holocaust make it a key historical memory for US society at large and for the US government (that’s why there is a Holocaust museum in DC).  But, I guess, this is all lost on some younger Americans. 

       Don’t get me wrong.  I think it is a legitimate question: why commemorate this atrocity and not certain others?  But the answer strikes me as utterly straightforward.  Just as it strikes me as obvious that, in the United States we should also remember the extermination of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans.  These are fundamental to the historical meaning of the US.  If we are to celebrate what is good in our history and ourselves, we must also remember what is bad.  And the Holocaust is fundamental to 20th century US history.

     I also agree that there should be continuing conversation about what other historical events should be commemorated.  I make a point of "remembering" (and, yes, I believe remembering is possible for occurrences outside of a life’s experience) the Great Leap Forward, the Rape of Nanjing, the Cultural Revolution and other terrible times in East Asia history.  If we are to understand the politics of China, Japan, Korea and other countries, we must involve ourselves in the very fraught process of historical memory (and denial) and commemoration.

    The tenor of the critique – that an individual should not be expected to commemorate an event that did not occur within her lifetime or to her immediate friends or relations – strikes me as deeply culturally impoverished.   What are the implications?  That we cannot identify with historical events?  That we should only define ourselves, and our ethics, by our contemporary context?  That the broader historical experience of humankind is somehow too remote to be relevant to our modern moral calculations?  I don’t think so.

     And then it hit me.  This is one of those instances where I am more of a Confucian than a Taoist.

     For Confucians, historical memory is fundamental.  At the level of society and politics, there is a believe that the ancient sage kings were morally superior, better than we are now.  Thus, we can all learn from the wisdom of Yao and Shun; they stand as exemplary leaders.  In showing us the good, they also point to the bad.  We know that Shun was especially filial because he stayed loyal to his father even in the face of the latter’s depravity.  In the context of the debilitating Warring States period, when Confucius and Mencius lived, the horrors of the present were obvious, and so the morality of the past stood out in bold historical relief.  They believed that we could reconstruct a more compassionate Humanity through historical memory.

     Confucian historical memory also operates on a more personal level.  We venerate the elders, even those beyond the personal memory of any living family members.  And we do this out of a sense of duty for those who did their family duty in the past, the fulfillment of which is, to some degree, is expressed in our current existence.   

    Now, I am not a strict Confucian on all of this.  But I can well understand the use of the past (not necessarily an ideal golden age) to forge identities and moral standards for the present.  In the most general way I agree with that.  Indeed, the "it didn’t happen directly to me, therefore, it’s really not significant" attitude, if taken seriously, would pretty much end the serious study of history, a bad thing to my mind.  It would severely limit the material available to us to make moral judgments, also a bad thing. (It might additionally end nationalism, possibly a good thing).

     Taoists would almost certainly disagree.  The live-in-the-moment sensibility draws us away from the past and our emotional and rationalist commitments to anything outside the immediate.  "It is! It just is?" says Chuang Tzu.  Don’t worry about causes or consequences, focus on the marvelous multiplicity of the now. 

    I can see the allure of that stance, I have felt its consolations (though I doubt the literally sophomoric student responsible for the Hitler posters here has really thought it through all that much).  But, ultimately, it asks to much.  Can we, should we, really cut ourselves off from the past?  In a meta sort of way, the authors of the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu did not wholly believe this themselves.  After all, the wrote books, they created historical-literary artifacts, that have come down through the ages to us.  If they really expected us to abandon the past, they would, in effect, have to tell us to not read their books.  But it’s too late.  I have, and I have learned from them, and I use their past to help define myself in my present.