- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Study of History is largely (though not entirely) useless in ensuring we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. If that's our primary concern, we need to figure out means to ensure children grow up in more loving, nurturing, supportive environments. If they grow up broken but well read, they'll use History like Buddy in The Incredibles used his toys--to cloud future progress as much as possible, to make all you fuckers pay!
Those interested in knowing how increasing love of children is responsible for any good we can dig up out of History, check out Lloyd deMause's Psychohistory web site (link at signature). But if you end up agreeing with his account of History (it's been getting better, owing to slow, very uneven, evolution of childrearing over time), consider sending him an e-mail asking him why he still hasn't discouraged people from immersing themselves (even if in an effort to nail them down right) in eras, even worse than the one we're in now.
