THE PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE, AND THE LIVING
Nico van Oudenhoven

Why is it that many people who live now feel attached to, worry about, and may even consider themselves responsible for the lives of those who will come to this world several generations later?
Why should they be concerned about these individuals’ well being, people who are total strangers to them, whom they will never meet or get to know and, realistically speaking, will never recognise or reward them for their humanity or call upon them to explain or justify their actions?
Why is it that many seek to protect, polish, preserve and promote their legacy in the hope that those who come decades, if not centuries, after them will remember them well?
Why do they do this, as they will not benefit personally?
Why is it that many others do not seem to care or even insist on their right to be forgotten?
Why is it that some feel propelled to see to it that the earth remains a liveable and habitable place long after they ceased to exist, and others could not really be bothered? Moreover, how do those empathetic attitudes, miexist,,s, and outlooks – or the absence thereof – develop in people, in young boys and girls? Are they innate or do they develop of their own accord, given the right kind of circumstances? If so, what are these circumstances? Do they have to be inculcated, programmed, or possibly imposed upon?
The past, or parts of it, is alive
Most parents care, fuss and are concerned about their children’s wellbeing and wish the best for them. Those who act or choose to do otherwise are frowned upon and seen as being remiss. Usually, parents also feel strongly about their children’s offspring and, if they live to see them, tend to extend their affection to their great-grand children as well. Typically, these sentiments are mutual.
It is likely that this also was the case with Augusta Bunge. In 1989, she passed away at the age of 109 years and 97 days while holding the Guinness Book of Records entry of having stood at the head of seven life generations. Seven generations of passing on emotions, knowledge, and feelings! This great-, great-, great-, great-, great grandmother’s life should have resonated well with adherents of the Iroquois’ ‘Great Law’ that extols to live in ways that are beneficial to those who come seven generations after them.
The difference between parents, grandparents and great-great parents and Iroquois is, strikingly, that the affections and engagements of the former commonly remain largely within the family, while the guidelines of the latter relate to all humankind as well as to the non-human world.
If one also considers that the Great Law tells people to behave in ways that are in accordance with the prescripts of those who lived up to seven generations before them, then, in this understanding, each individual person is inevitably located at the midpoint of a moving continuum of some 280 years long. For them, paying it forward is a natural given and like passing on the baton in a never-ending relay race with an infinite number of participants, each one after the other.
First Nation elders in Canada understand they lived on their lands some 525 generations before the Europeans arrived and continue to build on that long experience when raising their children. They share these visions with many others who feel connected with those who came ahead of them.
Thus, Bert Crowfoot, a Canadian journalist, photographer, and TV producer of Siksika/Saulteaux descent, is digitalising thousands of reels of tapes containing Indigenous music, stories and audio and video interviews with elders and community leaders. Why? “By doing this, you’re keeping them alive…You’re keeping their message alive, and that’s what’s important”.
Renowned and by all accounts astonishing are the ‘Songlines’, rhythmic songs and dances passed on from generation to generation by the Aboriginal peoples in Australia dating back some 50,000 years. They help the traveller to cross the land, as both words and rhymes describe the location of natural phenomena and landmarks, such as rock formations and are sometimes aided by petrosomatoglyphs. At the request of indigenous leaders, researchers at the Australian National University are recording these ancient Indigenous Songlines to preserve them for future generations.

Dictator Joseph Stalin understood the power of traditional age-old folksongs.
In the Ukraine, since time immemorial, folksingers, lirniki or banduristy, roamed the roads, hamlets, villages, and towns passing on stories, poems, and ballads from generation to generation. Most of them were blind and entirely harmless. “In the mid Nineteen Thirties, Stalin ordered to hold a national conference…. From all over the country hundreds showed up in the capital Kyiv where they were summarily shot down”.

Getty Conservation Institute announced the successful restauration of the tomb of Tutankhamun, the pharaoh who reigned from 1332 to1323 BCE. The burial chamber was completed in 2018, this “to preserve this important site for future generations”. Investment banker Martin Kunze would sympathise with these sentiments and initiatives. He founded the Memory of Mankind [MOM] whose main goal is to prevent the present civilisation from oblivion. Information is printed on ceramic tablets so that it cannot be erased, and which are stored in the salt mine at Hallstatt, Austria. “It’s a gift to both our grandchildren and to a civilisation far beyond the digital age”.

El Día de Muertos, ‘the Day of the Dead’ is a Mexican celebration that dates back centuries and is a tradition that has mixed pre-Columbian beliefs with the Christian ones of All Saints Day. Unlike the solemnity with which people go to a burial and are dressed in black – European influences – El Día de Muertosis a colourful and cheerful feast. This is as Aztecs and other Mesoamerican cultures assumed that the dead would return to visit their families during certain rituals and unlike the Spaniards who saw death as the end of life; they saw it as a continuation of it. The visit of the dead was awaited with joy.
Most religions accord sacred or saintly status to those who, according to their devotees, ‘shone’ in the past. They may vary in expressions but have in common that they are being prayed to, revered, venerated, worshiped, and often deified and regarded as being cognizant of and responsive to adorations and open to special requests.
Deceased family members are remembered by visiting their graves, having their photographs put on mantelpieces; while tribal, ethnic groups and nations erect monuments, record, and celebrate historical events, or conduct memorial services. Ancestor veneration happens in all societies whatever their degree of technological complexity, political order, or religious settings. They foster kinship values, such as filial virtues and family allegiance and keep the lineage alive.

It seems a natural phenomenon that individuals feel especially linked to earlier events and to their actors if these are part of a joint entity, foremost family, tribe, nation, location, religion, and ethnic group, but also for such things as their affection for a certain kind of music, food, or football club.
There may be only a few Chinese who are not proud of their civilisation, that goes back more than 12000 years. A case in point is teenager Chen Bolin who dresses up like his ancestors used to do during the Wei and Jan dynasties of some 1800 years ago. He often goes to the museum to communicate with the statues, and “he is not the only one, by far”.
Talk to any fan of Sheffield Football Club in the UK and the first thing you will hear is that theirs is the oldest football club in the world, dating back to 1857. At the time of this writing, Daily Record, a Scottish tabloid, carries on its front page the news that Reality TV celebrity Kim Kardashian is a relative of Highland hero Rob Roy MacGregor and is descended from Scottish royalty. For many Scots this is meaningful and exciting information.
These and numerous similar sentiments, activities and sights are of all times and all places. They underlie humans’ strong need to express their bond with the past and keep it alive and to be linked to the future. The urge to feel connected to or la sense of longing for what went before serves many purposes; it provides identity, pride, certainty, meaning and even repose, recuperation, and healing.
It is also for these reasons that rescuing cultural heritage a high priority after conflicts or natural disasters. Therefore, Mustafa Iskandar opened an art gallery and cultural centre in Tripoli, the Libyan capital in his war-torn country. This in hope to draw attention to a long-neglected old city in need of revival.
After the 2015 devastating earthquake in Nepal, precedence was given to restoring the nation’s historic sites. Similarly motivated, residents in Bosnia rebuilt a 400-year-old bridge that was destroyed during the war in the 1990s, this happened ahead of fixing their own roofs.

The massive resistance in Greece against allowing the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia [FYROM] to call itself ‘North Macedonia’ could best be understood in this context. Many Greeks see it as an appropriation of the names and heritage of Philip II, king of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great, [who died in June 323 BCE over some 110 generations ago] and was born in Greek Macedonia.
Although FYROM’s name change was approved with a small majority of the parliament in Athens, polls suggest that three quarter of the public were against the deal.
Nico van Oudenhoven is the Senior Associate International Child Development Initiatives [ICDI] See: ICDI.nl; Leiden, South Holland, Netherlands
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