Sometimes the past seems so far away. What happened yesterday is a million miles from the present moment. Sometimes the past seems right by us, side by side, never left us, it is actually embedded in us. In some ways we are the past in the present. Right?
And what is progress? Do we move forward? Or are we just spinning in circles? We have shiny new toys, but we are the same beings, carrying the same genetic heritage, the same genetic entities. We convince ourselves we've made "great progress" but are we kidding ourselves?
You see today's culture wars, they seem like yesterday's culture wars. You think wow, the American Civil War happened in 1861 - 1865. That is so long ago. Or maybe you think, wow, that's just a blink of an eye ago. It happened, is still happening. A long, never-ending war fought by other means.
That's a bit of a mind-melt. What was William Faulkner's famous quote? "The past is never dead. It's not even past."