memoricide - a spreading worldwide dis-ease

Ilan Pappé, Israeli historian and political activist, refers to the uprooting of Palestine's indigenous olive trees and the massive erasure of Palestinian history as state organized memoricide.

Memoricide is not just forgetting the past, it is the killing of our memory.

All over the world it seems governments, countries, organizations, and peoples prefer to bury a past that brings up messy issues with the possibility of attendant accountability or reparations.

The disrobing of Draupadi, 

Histories throughout the ages hold memory is an essential part of life. Memory is the love that forms the foundation which sustains and nurtures humanity in limitless ways.

A lover recalls the intimacy and happiness experienced in the past, using these memories to strengthen their present and current love.

Sharing stories of their love with others reassures them and their listeners that their love is alive and well. This remembering is sweet when lovers are together but grows poignant and saddens when they are apart.

In Western tradition the idea that our memories are stored in our genes is both alien and controversial. In Eastern tradition it is as ancient and ageless as the belief in reincarnation.

All memories, even the most cherished and nurtured, fade over time, but the emotions attached conjure up and remain as strong long after the memories fade away.

Could this be why the loss of a physical memory feels like a betrayal of the beloved? In love, if we forget, we erase the presence of the beloved and thereby, the beloved them self.

If the beloved has died, how much more painful is it to forget? The sound of the beloved's voice. The caressing touch of a lover. The lingering kiss of the loved one's lips.

With this lost recollection the beloved has died a second time.

The first death is when the heart beat is arrested. The second loss comes when you can no longer remember what their beating heart sounded like or whispered in your ear.

The willful rewriting of our past or erasing history is suicide, not only for the memory but our collective conscience.

Let our future not succumb to this fatal memoricide.