A Quote by Desmond Tutu
As human beings, even if we were to have tried to forget the past, if you dealt with it in a cavalier fashion, it would return to haunt you.
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If you run across a dog driving, would you ever forget that? You could never forget that, that bump. It'll haunt you for the rest of your life. Imagine if you killed a human being. You're not going to forget that. Well, I killed many.
I write - so it would seem - to recapture, to preserve and return to the past, though I might just as easily be writing to forget and put that past behind me.
It is boring to haunt a writer, and even more so to haunt a celebrity. I would haunt a literary figure! Possibly some superhero, maybe even James Bond. Constant adventures, fights, beautiful women--much more interesting that watching a writer who taps on computer all day long, or a celebrity posing in front of cameras.
Though the past haunt me as a spirit, I do not ask to forget.
I have tried to keep memory alive... I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.
The past does not haunt us. We haunt the past. We allow our minds to focus in that direction. We open memories and examine them. We reexperience emotions we felt during the painful events we experienced because we are recalling them in as much detail as we can.
Elephants can remember, but we are human beings and mercifully human beings can forget.
Still I believe that Hanna Arendt, she was wrong when she tried to say that we are all actually capable of this, it's not true. I think it's not true. There are certain things human beings are not capable of. I mean people, even normal human beings. You have to do certain things in order to become what the enemy was and I didn't accept her philosophical outlook on that.
Take a good long look at human beings in their actual practices and motives; bring the utmost psychological and bio-economic factors to bear on making sense of their illusions and delusions. What then would the truth have to be, such that such human beings are FIT TO KNOW IT at all, even provisionally or tentatively?
When did the word 'temperament' come into fashion with us? Perhaps it came in when we discovered that artists were human beings.
We're human beings we are - all of us - and that's what people are liable to forget. Human beings don't like peace and goodwill and everybody loving everybody else. However much they may think they do, they don't really because they're not made like that. Human beings love eating and drinking and loving and hating. They also like showing off, grabbing all they can, fighting for their rights and bossing anybody who'll give them half a chance.
Fashion has a reason to be, because in fashion you can find new kinds of expression about human beings. It's my way to communicate.
There are times when one's life appears to be a stage. People come, people go. They come in order to go, and go with no intent of return. When they return, they return as one's past. A past that would make you feel that the present is false.
Many times, I have been shocked and frightened by human beings. I have experienced delight and revulsion. I have sometimes wanted to forget what I heard, to return to a time when I lived in ignorance. More than once, however, I have seen the sublime in people and wanted to cry.
I no longer become angry. I not only do not say angry words, I do not even think angry thoughts! If someone does an unkind thing to me I feel only compassion instead of resentment. Even upon those who cause suffering I look with deep compassion, knowing the harvest of sorrow that lies in store for them. If there were those who hated me, I would love them in return, knowing that hatred can only be overcome by love, and knowing that there is good in all human beings which can be reached by a loving approach.
Doing things like playing music, something that's so natural and basic to human function, running around in nature, eating delicious food. These things are intrinsic in basic, primordial to human beings, so that's sort of a way to return to a blank canvas, allowing my true personality to return.
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