Remembrance  

Past events set us up for the present and the future. Furthermore, anything that takes us back in time is something we either treasure or avoid thinking about. This is the case because it transports us to either a happy or painful past. Undoubtedly, history teaches us lessons about how to approach the present and the future, good or bad.

A simple memory of something that provided us such joy is worth considering since it would somehow give us comfort in challenging times that everything would be all right. Remembering someone who has impacted so many aspects of our lives entail hoping that others will treat us similarly in the future.

History is, without a doubt, the best teacher. It imparts knowledge that we can use to replicate excellent activities or behaviors or avoid making the same mistakes twice. Since the past cannot be changed, we can avoid repeating it in the present. How we understand our past will be evaluated by the following generation. Our current behavior will be evaluated based on how well we understand our past.

The biggest murder of all occurs when we alter the past. Changing the past entails altering the facts, which serve as the very basis for our thoughts and viewpoints. Opinions and perspectives are arbitrary, depending on the person viewing them as well as their own prejudices, preferences, and whims. As a result, they are never trustworthy for the good of all.

There is more to collective memory than merely scholarly interest. This erasure of the past is equated with the passing of moral man. Today's political elites recognize that a nation's memory is a manufactured artifact, and they want to use it to influence their own political cultures. Like this, people frequently recognize the need to behave pro-actively in response to prior traumas that pose a threat to obscure present-day experiences. The challenge of integrating the past into current politics --either by defining the polity in relation to the past or by insisting upon its transcendence-- relies on both politics and collective memory psychology, as many nation-states in Eastern Europe, Southern Africa, and Latin America attempted to recover or institutionalize democracy in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Researchers have questioned how to heal after horrific events like the Holocaust, the Hiroshima bombing, the Vietnam War, or the fratricide atrocities in Yugoslavia. There are many methods to approach the past, all of which entail interests, power, and exclusion, even if some classic studies have discovered significant characteristics linked to history and memory. The politics of just remembrance about past atrocities, a discussion in which numerous academic fields as well as society at large have been involved, depends on selection processes as well as on variables that are beyond the realm of human reason.

Martial law in the Philippines has numerous lessons to offer, depending on our viewpoints. It is now in our hands to decide how to use them to improve the present and the future. The only issue with humanity is that we keep making the same mistakes. We can benefit from knowing our history because it substantially affects who we are today. We must go to history to comprehend how and why our modern world is the way it is. Our understanding of the past improves our comprehension of the present and contributes to building a better future.