This boundary-shifting fusion of thinking, storytelling, and meditation takes as its starting point five axioms-
'Give Me a Child Before the Age of 7 and I'll Give You the (Wo)Man', 'History Repeats Itself...', 'Those Who Forget the Past are Condemned to Repeat It', 'You Can't Enter The Same River Twice', 'Time Heals All Wounds'.
These beliefs - or intuitions - about the role the past plays in our present are often evoked as if they are timeless and self-evident truths. It is precisely because they are neither, yet still we are persuaded by them, that they tell us a great deal about the forces that shape our culture and the way we live.
The past shapes the present - they teach us that in schools and universities. (Shapes? Infiltrates, more like; imbues, infuses.) This past cannot be visited like an ageing aunt. It doesn't live in zoo enclosures. Half the time, this past is nothing less than the present's beating heart. How to speak of its aliveness? Stories are not enough, history and psychology - not enough.
Maybe this is how.
