What we owe, and do not owe, the past, Part 2 of 2

We owe the past much, but do we owe it everything?

In last week’s essay, I engaged with the question, “What do we owe the past?” I began by accepting that the past matters for the present, that we have a responsibility to remember the past both for moral reasons and from a recognition that we cannot fully understand the present without understanding what came before and why. We owe the past, and those who lived in the past, our remembrance of the history that shapes all we do, and are, in the moment. In remembering the past, we should also be learning from the past, recalling the wisdom of our forebearers and trying to avoid their mistakes as we work to build a better world in the present.

We should also try, to the extent we can, to rectify the injustices of the past. While it is true that there is much about the legacy of the past that cannot be changed, there are still ways we can reckon with the past to address some measure of the injustices we inherit, and, where we can do so, we should. These all reflect obligations we owe to the past that should inform all we do in the present, so that even what is bad about the past can in some way — through a process of remembering, learning, and informing the work of rectifying historical injustice — help to create a better present and future.

All this is to say we owe the past much. But do we owe it everything? The possibility that we may is not to be lightly dismissed. The weight of history is heavy indeed and we have, collectively, long neglected or accepted the willful distortion of much about the past that deserves a full and honest reckoning. Given our shortcomings with respect to our engagement with history, it makes moral sense that a correction, even at times an overcorrection, is due, in which we insist on a more explicit and ongoing reckoning with the sins of the past.

This is particularly true when we see how the unresolved legacy of past events can hold us back in the present, as, for example, in the U.S., where the legacies of slavery and racism drive persistent black-white health gaps that matter deeply for the current health of populations. In such cases, we should indeed do all we can to address the history that underlies these poor outcomes.

However, there is also a case to be made that, while we owe history much, we do not owe it everything, and that acting as if we do may pose challenges to our efforts to build a better world in the present. I have long argued for pragmatism in pursuit of such a world, and that core to this pragmatism should be our commitment to building a big-tent movement for health. This means staying true to our values while taking care to avoid actions and rhetoric that may make it harder for our work to truly be by the public, for the public. In recent years, and particularly since the 2024 election, there has been much talk about the words and symbols we embrace in our work and whether some of the language we use, and the tone with which we speak, can have an alienating effect on the communities with which we are trying to engage. The way we talk about history is part of the broader subject of how we communicate in general, as we aspire to speak in ways that build bridges, grow our coalition, and help advance the work of building a future that is radically better than our past.

This means that we have a responsibility to look at how we speak about the past through the lens of whether how we do so is helping get us to such a future. Does our engagement with the past fulfill our obligations to history without veering into a mode that is more performative than it is constructive? Do we occasionally tip into the kind of moral grandstanding that is less about acknowledging the past and more about soliciting acknowledgement of our own virtue in the context of contemporary mores? These are hard questions, but they are necessary if we are truly committed to the kind of self-reflection that helps ensure the integrity of our efforts, including our efforts to do right by the past.

With these questions in mind, it seems to me that there are indeed ways in which we do not owe history everything, and that we should be as clear with ourselves about what we do not owe the past as we are about what we owe it.

How, then, should we think of what we do not owe the past?

First, we should remember that the past is the past and done. Much of the past was experienced and conducted by people who are no longer alive, and those who are alive have little relationship to those who came before them. Certainly, there are many in the present whose social conditions are a direct result of the ill-gotten gains of their ancestors, but even more have gained very little from any ancestors in the past. While the core injustices of the past in any one country create a responsibility for remembering, learning, and, where possible, acting, it is also important to remember that, in the U.S., a substantial proportion of the country had little relationship to the sins of the past other than through present-day inhabiting of the country. About a quarter of Americans now are first- or second-generation immigrants, with little ancestral relationship to the horrors previously wrought by past Americans.

So, the past is a memory and, for many, an abstraction, and we do not owe it more than we do memories. I am often struck by how ahistorical younger people can be, unaware of figures of some historical consequence, or of writings that have influenced many. And this is, well, understandable. Each generation, every present, needs to write its own story, and that needs to be written in the present, with an eye to the future, and our efforts to remember, learn from, and rectify the past should not be in the way of that.

Second, and relatedly, the past should not be coloring everything about our present. There is little that is as unappealing to the young as to keep hearing about the triumphs and hardships of those who are older. The present deserves its own triumphs, and its hardships need to be recognized and appreciated by those living in the moment — not memorialized by those living in the past. This means that there is a time to remember, learn from, rectify the past, and there is a time when we achieve little, and perhaps even push back those who stand to remember the past, by forcing such a reckoning. It is on us to have the wisdom to know when such memorialization is appropriate and when forcing it simply is counterproductive. As always in our pursuit of a better world, we should always ask ourselves before we speak if what we are about to say will truly get us closer to our goal, or if it reflects a diversion from our path, or, worse, a reversal of progress we have made. Progress, in the context of history, means taking steps in the present to — to the extent we can — help to rectify some of the injustices of history. Some words help us to do this important work while others are more aligned with creating the perception that we are doing this work while, in reality, we may be embracing signs and symbols that keep our coalition less inclusive than it should be.

Third, at the end of the day, what we do as a society, and what we should be doing if we are concerned with health, is, and should always be, about the future. I have written before about the importance of acknowledging how much healthier the present is than the past, and how much healthier the future stands to be. And that is our goal, really — to create a healthier and better future. The past needs to be remembered, learned from, rectified to the end of a better future. This pushes us to go back to a fundamental question I have often found helpful to ask: What are we trying to achieve? In this case, that seems an important question to ask always about our efforts to weave the past into the present. And it becomes particularly important when issues of attribution and restitution come under discussion. Because both of these are tricky concepts indeed when one asks how the past can point to the future. Is there a time when restitution in pursuit of justice is the right way to cope with the past? Yes. One can point perhaps to the Nuremberg trials, and the clarity of attribution of guilt for some leaders of the Nazi party as one such example. But there also have been times when efforts at restitution have become, in practice, exercises in retribution rather than a genuine pursuit of justice, which can lead to social and political cycles that fail to move us into a better future. This was the case, for example, during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which aggressively targeted aspects of the country’s history for revision and became a kind of vengeance, contributing to the broader violence and chaos of that period.

I will end this two-part essay where I started — with affirming that the present is ineluctably bound to the past, and that building a better future rests on a present that invests in remembering, learning from, and rectifying, where possible, the sins of the past. I also ground this thinking in an appreciation of the limits of our reckoning with the past, and a reminder that we respect the past because it is the right thing to do — but equally or perhaps more right is respecting and investing in the future. This may be, in part, what makes embracing difficult ideas, as The Healthiest Goldfish tries to do, interesting — the very fact that they are difficult, and not neatly resolved in a slogan or catchphrase. Rather, they require careful deliberation and weighing of approaches. There is perhaps little that requires this approach as much as our grappling with the past, to build a better future.