American philosopher George Santayana is regularly
quoted:
"Those who cannot remember
the past are condemned to repeat it."
Perhaps more important are the words preceeding
these famous ones:
"Progress, far from consisting
in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there
remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible
improvement; and when experience is not retained as among savages,
infancy is perpetual."
Civilization progresses by storing in external memory
its achievements.
Primitives
have no way to preserve the memory of achievements; they must
always re-invent.
Although Walter Miller does not directly place
the blame on us for the ensuing holocaust that occurred a millennium
before the opening of his story, he does let the reader understand
the individual need for personal involvement. Without helping
our civilization progress, we will not remember what has happened.
Letting others--if there are those--run things, we will lose touch
with our culture.
