It's probably too painful to remember everything, so society tends to recall the more pleasant or 'meaningful' things. With this selective memory comes what must be an unconscious loathing of the past. But it's confusing, because on one hand, people say they like history, but how many actually visit the museums or study genealogy? Do we have to be over 50 to be interested in the past?

This attitude plays out in many interesting ways and says something about how we try to protect ourselves from reality and how we see ourselves as superior to our ancestors.

As a kid growing up in Sacramento, I remember visiting Sutter's Fort and seeing a diorama of the Mexican-American War. The conflict may have had more meaning to me back then, having been born and raised there.

But a few years ago, I went back to Sutter's Fort and noticed that the display had completely disappeared. Interested to know why, I spoke to an official there who gave me no more than a blank expression. I wondered if the disappearing diorama had anything to do with not wanting to incite the swelling Latino population and was the product of the “politically correct.”

Then I was reminded of what E.F. Schumacher wrote in his 'Guide for the Perplexed.' On a trip to Soviet Russia the British economist looked for churches on city maps. Not able to find any, he concluded that the Soviets, in their zeal to eliminate religion had succeeded in wiping out all vestiges of it. Their maps said it all. Churches hadn't been bulldozed or burnt to the ground, but they had been systematically removed from official State maps so that visitors were given the impression that religion was gone for good.

And every now and then, the NAACP renews interest in banning D.W. Griffith's 'The Birth of a Nation,' a landmark silent film made nearly 100 years ago. Critics of the film said it was also a landmark in racism and wanted selected scenes removed from it.

But if we eradicate the evidence of all our shortcomings, we won't know how far we've progressed.

As the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, Robert D. Kaplan wrote that, “if a glimpse of the future is possible, it must come from an intimacy with the present clarified by the great works of the past.”