Anamnesis, Part 3: The Perfidy of Presentism

Last updated on August 11, 2026

California is home to the most recognized of oldest living things in the world, the Giant Sequoia. If you visit the grove in Muir Woods National Park, you’ll encounter a cross section of a tree which fell in 1930. The tree’s marked date rings include famous world events of history that span the 1021 years the tree’s life, which began in 909 AD.

For a Sequoia, its millennia-long history exists in the interior of its trunk, known as heartwood. Every year is recorded in the rings, whether good or bad. And while the outer layers of the trunk are alive, the heartwood itself is dead. Yet, without the existence of the dead past at its core, the tree would never have survived. It literally stands on the foundations of its past. Indeed, trees that lose too much of their heartwood fall to the ground and die.

As human beings, we do not have a physical record of our past in our bodies. Our “heartwood” is ethereal, existing somewhere in the mysterious synopsis of our memories and tangentially recorded in old documents and photographs. But, are we really so different? Can we eliminate our heartwood and survive? Many people now believe we can – that the past should be forgotten and dismissed.

A decade after the marked sequoia fell, the Thomas Wolfe novel, You Can’t Go Home Again, was published posthumously. It set off what would become the common idiom often repeated by so many who return to their childhood homes only to experience disappointment. The idiom speaks the truth if we expect to find the unchanged vision that sticks in our memories. Yet, return we still do – time and time again. There is good reason. Genealogists know more than most how personal history, including what extends well beyond our own childhood, shapes who we are. And it is a fool’s errand to attempt to push it away. Sooner or later, you will become the senior members of the family and the trappings of your ancestors’ lives will land in your lap. Depending on how you perceive it, some of what you inherit will either warm your heart or shock you.

I encountered this choice upon returning to the home of my youth to move my mother closer to us. After spending as much time as I could to bring her here, Sheryl went to the house to prepare it for selling. I knew she would find more than 65 years of accumulated trappings of the life my parents had together. I remembered my father’s workbench in the garage, still well stocked with a large amount of “in case I need them” stuff. Most clear in my memory was the cabinet to the left of the workbench which contained a large looped coil of electrical wire, no doubt out of code for decades. It sat on the bottom shelf like a prehistoric snake. The coil of wire was nothing nostalgic in itself, other than reminding me of my father’s propensity to save almost anything left over, just in case he needed it again. There was also something on the inside door of the cabinet which, had I been present, I would have retrieved as an heirloom of my father’s life.

A National Safety Council workplace safety poster indicative of the 1950s era. (public domain)

When you opened the door of the cabinet, you would see a classic workplace safety poster from the 1950s. The poster admonishes in large type, “Remember, always keep your load close to you when you carry.” With the admonishment is a cartoon of a man carrying a beautiful woman in his arms. She is wearing a classic 1950s dress, her legs visible with feet pointing in pretty shoes. He, meanwhile, is fulfilling the safety council poster’s requirement with a huge grin on his face.

In today’s 21^st Century world, you will not find such a poster on Amazon. It would be considered indicative of a misogynist culture – something to be discarded and forgotten. But, put the poster into the context of when my father got it, and you may see something different. My father had served in World War II, a time when death and destruction was all around him during his deployment. Being a GI meant never knowing whether any day was your last. It meant never knowing if you would ever see your home and family again. For many, it meant never knowing if you would have the joy of love and making love in your life. It’s not surprising that these men found comfort in “pin up” illustrations and photographs of women. It reminded them that where there is love, there is life.

My father grew up steeped in this culture. So, naturally, he participated in its conventions. Yet, my mother considered him a kind and devoted husband who took her feelings into account. He supported her when she wanted to work and never denied her independence or a say in their shared lives. He was a man who deeply loved his wife and was always faithful to her. He cared and provided for us, his children. Of course, he loved that she wore dresses and skirts. As a child, I remember seeing them together on the sofa with her legs on his lap – a wonderful, touching example to me as a child of what it means to be married. None of these virtues are apparent in the mere fact that he kept and enjoyed this poster, considered sexist by modern standards. Because I know my father, I see beyond the poster. In posting it inside the cabinet, he was celebrating his marriage to the beautiful woman who was my mother, every time he opened the door.

My mother at work at the Singer Sewing Company. A member of the “Greatest Generation,” she was a wife and mother yet still had a career as a seamstress and businesswoman, ultimately opening a dress shop with her sister.

Why is it so many in our modern culture engage in condemning their ancestors for their behavior by today’s standards? Do they expect our ancestors should have known better?

Imagine you were blessed with the gift of infallible foresight. Imagine you could foresee all that would transpire in the coming years, perhaps in the coming century. You could predict what would become “the right side of history,” as is so easily claimed these days. What would you do with that knowledge? Would you do anything you could to change the future? Would you attempt to divert your own death and of those whom you love? Before jumping to embracing this gift, consider this poem by Gabriela Mistral:

I am Cassandra – she who, without asking,
understood it all and still came to her fate,
I, Cassandra, full of visions,
who sees her own death without turning away,
and hears in the night the day that follows.¹

Cassandra, painted by Evelyn De Morgan (public domain)

The Curse of Cassandra comes from ancient Greece. Cassandra was the Princess of Troy whom the Greek god Apollo desired and pursued. Playwright, Aeschylus, tells us she had promised Apollo favors for his gift to her of foresight. Latin author Hyginus in Fabulae claims Apollo gave her prophecy as a courtship gift. All agree on what followed. She did not consent to giving him his desire. Apollo, though enraged, could not revoke a divine power. So, he added the curse that no one would believe her prophecies. When she correctly predicted the destruction of Troy, no one believed her and everyone thought her mad, not helped by how she tore at her own hair in frustration.²

Centuries after the Curse of Cassandra was told, many authors, playwrites, and screen writers have created stories with this same premise and its subsequent warning of consequences. Gandalf, one the wisest of all of Tolkien’s characters, reminds us that even the very wise cannot see all ends.³

And yet, human beings appear to have an unfailing predilection for passing judgement on the people who have lived before them, including ancestors as recent as their own parents. I was not immune to this – that is, until I experienced the aftermath of my parents’ deaths.

When my mother died, all of the family heirloom photographs and documents came to me. I created a slide show for my mother’s memorial service, including the photographs and story of their five-year long-distance courtship. The experience transformed my perception of my parents. I understood, perhaps for the first time, who my parents really were – like all of us, young people trying to find happiness and make their way in the world. Here’s what I related at my mother’s memorial service:

My mother has had a long life. It is perhaps a cruel trick of life that the longer you live, the greater your chance of being remembered more for your frailties, mental lapses, and crotchetiness than for who you have been much of your life.

Looking through the photos and artifacts of my parents’ lives, I have realized that it’s not the memories of the disappointments, arguments, and afflictions that endure. Even the tragedy of dementia, which has hit our family so hard, cannot hold sway if we hold fast to the important memories. I’m finding that remembering the love shared and the joys of a life lived together – often in the simplest of things — raises those memories above those from the darkest seasons.⁴

I decided I owed them a compassionate memory – a choice to remember the best in them first. My parents did the best they could for me. They provided for my well-being, never abused, and always loved us. Did they enforce discipline and set limits on our desires? Yes. But that too is providing for a child’s well-being and an important expression of parental love. They followed their convictions on how to be good people based upon the context of the time in which they lived. Not only would it be unreasonable for me to expect more than this from them, it would be unkind and disrespectful for me to expect them to be like Cassandra.

When I dove into family genealogy, I realized I had to extend the same understanding and compassion for my parents to my ancestors beyond. It’s easy to take present day conventions of what our modern culture considers right and wrong, don a personal judge’s robe, and pronounce those who came before us “guilty” of all manner of social injustices. But, it comes at a high price. Choose to judge and dismiss your ancestors for what they believed within their own time, and you are choosing to deny an essential part of who you are. You are hollowing out your own heartwood.

Historians refer to the practice of judging people in the past by present standards as presentism or anachronistic judgement. People who engage in it proceed on two flawed assumptions. First, that their personal standards are the moral and ethical ones of the current time, even though those standards are often not widely held, if not hotly debated. Despite Jean Jacques Rousseau’s imaginings of “general will,” there is no one save God who has the omniscience to divine what the general will should be. Second, that their standards represent an unquestionable “enlightenment” is arrogant at best and destructive at worse, given future generations will inevitably question them. One need explore history to find a dizzying list of practices and innovations considered progress or enlightenment, which turned out be otherwise. It’s worth noting how failed innovations and practices are forgotten to the fog of history while successful innovations are quickly recalled.

By engaging in anachronistic judgement of our ancestors, we deny them their humanity. Our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, the long line of great grandparents, and the ever-extending array of cousins all had their challenges, hardships, and losses in life. In her podcast on presentism, genealogist Devon Noel Lee quotes from the lyrics of Rascal Flatts’ song Stand:

‘Cause when push comes to shove
You taste what you’re made of
You might bend ’til you break
‘Cause it’s all you can take
On your knees you look up
Decide you’ve had enough
You get mad, you get strong
Wipe your hands, shake it off
Then you stand (then you stand)⁵

Devon reminds us that our ancestors faced this. She tells us to see their story from the perspective of historical context so we can understand when they shook themselves off and stood.⁶

Think back to when you were young. Were all of your choices good? Do you cringe at what you did, what you said, or what you thought? And yet, being able to redo those things would change who you are. Our life’s experience, including our mistakes, forms us.. If we can extend grace to the “lived experience” of people in the present day, including ourselves, how can we deny the same to people who preceded us? Who are we to judge?

Without a doubt, there is no excuse for real abuse and cruelty among our ancestors. Every family pedigree has its share of scoundrels and abusers – perhaps criminals. Unless they have paid for their actions, it’s appropriate they as individuals are forgotten or dismissed. But, what is happening now goes well beyond singling out abusers in one’s lineage. The retributive mob who, through presentism, appoint themselves judge, jury, and executioner, convict entire generations for simply being part of the past. Statues are toppled or sprayed with red paint. Graves are desecrated. Descendants are admonished to dismiss their ancestors as perpetrators of social injustice. We acquiesce to their demands at or own peril. The heartwood of entire family trees would be hollowed out.

The desecrated graves of Halldale Cemetery in Montville, Maine.⁷

Mere days before writing this essay, local news in Maine reported that nearly 50 graves were desecrated at the Halldale Cemetery in Montville. Headstones were toppled and deliberately shattered. Many were the graves of veterans from the American Revolution to the Vietnam War, all with American flags that were pulled out, broken in half, and thrown on the ground. This kind of hateful act goes beyond kids “just being mischievous.” It is wanton, targeted desecration requiring planning, strength, and personal conviction.

The empty space left in the cliff side where the large Budda of Bamiyan used to be before it was blown up by the Taliban. (public domain)

Excusing hateful and unlawful acts against ancestors only emboldens the mob to expand their misguided “activism” wider. History has documented what happens next. Given legitimacy and power, the revengeful mob becomes the next authoritarian regime that seeks to eradicate the past. Cultural heritage, having endured for centuries, is destroyed by the state. Entire forests of legacy soon fall.

My father’s family is descended from the French Huguenots. They fled France to live in the Hesse region of Germany on the eastern side of the Rhine River. In 1730, some of them arrived in Colonial America, establishing their home in Northeastern Pennsylvania. They faced much hardship and personal loss in the course of a 450-year history. They shook themselves off and stood.

My mother’s family is descended from the Sephardic Jewish people who also became refugees in 1492, escaping the Spanish Inquisition to scatter around the Mediterranean. After centuries in Algeria, they faced persecution again and would have been exterminated had the United States not entered World War II. In 1961, they fled again, escaping the horrors of the Algerian Revolution. Over the course of more than five centuries, they faced horrible hardship and personal loss. They too, shook themselves off and stood.

My ancestors are part of the many rings in the heartwood of my lineage, some scorched by fire, some thinned by hard times, and others thick and solid from health and happiness. None of this history is apparent by looking at me. The heartwood of my ancestry supported my existence for 70 years, solidified with all of the joys and losses my ancestors experienced, and the virtues they had. It is in the records I find, the stories I write about them, and the heirloom photographs I preserve, that their place in the heartwood is recorded. For me, engaging in anamnesis means refusing to forget who my ancestors were – all of who they were, including their flaws. But, it also means choosing to first honor them for the best of who they were and to be grateful to them. They are my heartwood and I stand on what they gave me. One day soon, I will become part of another ring in the heartwood. I hope my descendants will remember me in the same way. ❖

Author’s Notes

See the page sidebar at the top on the right regarding the entire series on Anamnesis.

The Grove

The cover photo at the top was taken during our 2025 visit to the Drury-Chaney Grove in the Avenue of the Giants in Northern California. These trees have the genius and species name of Sequoia sempervirens, meaning Sequoia that is evergreen, always living. And indeed many do always live as they clone themselves with new shoots alongside original old growth, ensuring that new growth with the same DNA as the old growth continues into the next millennium.

Walking through this grove of Sequoias was simultaneously an inspiring, otherworldly, and humbling experience.

Regarding Inline Links

As Nicholas Carr writes in The Shallows, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains:

“Links don’t just point us to related or supplemental works; they propel us toward them. They encourage us to dip in and out of a series of texts rather than devote sustained attention to any one of them. Hyperlinks are designed to grab our attention. Their value as navigation tools is inextricable from the distraction they cause.” ⁷

In recognition of this important point, I have decided to provide citations and links to related resources here at the bottom. Even if it’s online, let’s return reading to being a sustained experience without the constant distractions of links that scream, “go here!”

Attempts to Destroy the Heartwood in History

Towards the end of this piece, I stepped out on the limb of making predictions about the fall of “entire forests.” I have no gift of foresight allowing me to be certain this would happen – nor do I want it. However, there are many examples in history of revolutions that sought to eradicate social structures and cultural traditions of the past to replace it with a “new world order” of equity and progress, only to establish a new authoritarian regime in the process.

As shown in the photograph above, the Buddhas of Bamiyan, a UNESCO world heritage site in Afghanistan, were blown up by the Taliban when they took control of the location in 2001. It is believed they were carved in the 6th Century, lasting 1400 years until the Taliban deemed them doomed.

The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 promised an era of worker and peasant power only to establish a one-party state that led to millions of deaths under Stalin’s state sponsored famines and “purges.”

Mao Zedong’s Communist Chinese Revolution promised a new era of equity for the Chinese people. Given power, Mao and his supporters then launched the Cultural Revolution to eradicate the “Four Olds” (old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas) in China. It caused widespread social upheaval, decimated China’s rich cultural heritage, and led to starvation, purges, and persecution.

The French Revolution, begun to save the peasants from the excesses and abuse of the French nobility, led to France’s infamous “Reign of Terror,” a continuously lurching authoritarian state in which no one was immune to being denounced and guillotined. By the time it ended, 55,000 of France’s own citizens had been murdered.

There are many more.

References

Mistral, Gabriela. Madwomen: The Locas mujeres Poems of Gabriela Mistral. Translated and edited by Randall Couch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
“The Curse of Cassandra: Understanding a Prophetess.” FICTIONFILE. Boyd Media LLC, August 6, 2025. https://doi.org/https://fictionphile.com/cassandra-of-troy/.
Tolkien, J. R. R. (1966). The Fellowship of the Ring (p. 58). Houghton Mifflin Company. https://doi.org/10.1177/0040571X5505842014.
Jim Griesemer. 2017. “Jim’s Tribute to His Mother, Juliette.” YouTube. September 24, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76zCrLdrVmY.
Orton, Dan Earnest, and Eric Blair Daly. 2007. StandDigital. Reservoir Media Music, Universal Music Corp., Songs Of Windswept Pacific, Southside Independent Music Publishing.
‌Write Your Family History with Devon Noel Lee. “Should You Criticize Your Ancestors? Presentism in Family History.” YouTube, 17 Nov. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=nymcr6ng0F0. Accessed 9 Aug. 2025.
Wagner, Will. 2025. “Montville Community Seeking Answers after Nearly 50 Headstones Toppled and Destroyed.” Https://Www.wabi.tv. WABI. August 4, 2025. https://www.wabi.tv/2025/08/04/montville-community-seeking-answers-after-nearly-50-headstones-toppled-destroyed/.
‌Carr, Nicholas. 2011. The Shallows, What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.