The capacity of memory, both collective and individual, to gloss over, improve on, or distort the facts is particularly evident at periods when the foundations of a society are collapsing. Those disorders to which memory is prey—the tendency to embellish or suppress “awkward” detail, the need to vindicate oneself—show how dangerous it is to rely on one’s own conviction of being right; since this is all too often based on a false criterion, our main task is to find a true one. There is also the problem that, while distorting our recollections and thus hindering a proper appreciation of individual or historical experience, memory is yet the one feature that distinguishes us as human beings. How can we resolve this contradiction and arrive at the unadulterated truth, so that we stop deceiving ourselves and others and draw the right conclusions from our bitter experience? We have all played our part in the work of destruction, and heaven help us if it is taken to its logical conclusion.
Also a reminder that it is the task of that “memory,” at least at times, to “to save and preserve our souls out of the chaos.” That is, “to bear our lives more than to shape them, to hope more than to plan, to hold out more than to stride ahead.”