historical

[jephly]

“A man without history is a man without humor,” said Galal Amin, an economist and author who has written about Egypt’s modern decline. “A man with history is more likely to have humor, because he is more likely to see the irony in things, how things were and how they turned out to be. And patience

Comments

[gmcnaughton]

"Behold," I continued, "this moment! From this gateway, Moment, a long, eternal lane leads backward: behind us lies an eternity. Must not whatever can walk have walked on this lane before? Must not whatever can happen have happened, have been done, have passed by before?"

[jephly]

"All that is straight lies. All truth is crooked; time itself is a circle."

[phoebe_k]

Growing up in two cultures, one very old and one very new, I would have to say there's a lot of truth to that. But patience and humor sound like positive qualities, and the flipside is it would be just as true to say the older culture has more cynicism and suspicion, for the same exact reasons.

[jephly]

Point. I guess the trick is to combine history with a fresh perspective. Perhaps that's why immigrants from the Old World to the New one were so successful.

(You remind me of my Ukrainian Jewish grandparents who fled the Russian Civil War for New York. My grandfather in particular never forgot his heritage, but also drank up the American entrepreneurial spirit.)