I mean this habit we have where we constantly think of, for example, how foolish 20th century Europeans were because they let the Nazis in. We are convinced that we are immune to such things, because we are smarter, because we are alive. It is as if there is some merit to being alive, or as if it is a punishment to have died. We are just specks of dust. Grains of sand on an endless beach, right? 30,000 years ago, give or take, even the man who was covered in furs and shit, who hunted mammoths—he was already like us: he already had the same intelligence, ten fingers and gripping hands, and he had the same eyes; he saw reality just like us. The only thing that has changed is the narration, how that reality is told. Other than that, there is no difference. So why do we think we are better? It has to do with the religion of progress, this religion in which we live where we are always ‘improving’. In the word ‘progress’, this cultural evolution or the evolution of the human race, as if we are always a renewed and better version of humanity. The 2.0 version or the 3.0. It’s nonsense. Today, with covid and climate change, maybe we’re starting to realise that. We are beginning to suspect that we are not as cool and special as we thought. We are as dumb as we have always been as a society, and we make the same mistakes. But it also has to do with the fact that the dead are not here to protect themselves, we can say what we want about them, and we can reduce them to a stereotype.
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