History & Community at JLV
A dear friend recently drew my attention to how closely I have associated history with community in this newsletter— frankly a very personal publication. I can believe it: history and community are inextricably interwoven for me.
A community without a sense of its history is composed of neighbors who are strangers that simply live next door to one another, and history without a sense of community is that boring subject we were all required to study in high school, with its endless lists of discoveries, battles, and treaties. Either is without significance on its own, while each brings meaning to the other.
The history that fascinates me here at JLV is not simply what may have happened before I arrived. Instead, I look into the faces of the people that I meet and ask myself “where is this person coming from?” and “what lies behind that expression?” This is the living history that confronts me every day in my direct relationships with others, giving meaning to the days that I share with them.
In my practice as a psychotherapist I’ve learned that the past is always with us, whether we are aware of it or not. Buildings are not haunted, we are— either by our own indulgences in nostalgia or by the ghosts of the past to which we are particularly vulnerable. Either way, this haunting represents an incomplete involvement with what has taken place, and an incomplete understanding of who it is we are.
Nostalgia denies the opportunity to be changed that a more conscious consideration of history provides. It is a subjective, and therefore prejudicial recollection of events and people, in a revisionist approach that intends to support the opinions we already hold— an egosyntonic sort of narcissism that ignores what really happened when it contradicts our self-serving fantasies.
An example of indulging in nostalgia happens when, driving along Stage Gulch Road, I remember that this was the way my great-great-grandfather Robert Crane had ridden with his brothers, after staying overnight with General Vallejo and heeding his advice to invest their earnings from the goldfields into California real estate, as soon as possible. It’s a delightfully romantic story, a sentimental one that overlooks a lot of the warts and wrinkles of the way Americans came to our valley and claimed ownership.
On the other hand, there is the genuine haunting by ghosts of the past. The experience of being haunted is the opposite of nostalgia; rather than exercising our imagination to project self-serving stories, we find ourselves vulnerable to the environment and introject, that is, become subjected to invasions of negative, egodystonic narratives lurking there.
These are the incomplete tragedies that continue to play themselves out today— rather like the forgotten childhood traumas I encounter in my work, living on in the form of one mental illness or another. I’ve heard the stories of indian curses on this land for example, and believe them— if I were one of them, in those particular days, I’d be cursing a lot too. Those who are haunted by these ghosts submit themselves to these curses out of an unconscious guilt or shame that makes them emotionally vulnerable.
I am certain this is why the more indigenous peoples have learned to respect their elders, and why we should do so as well. A nomadic life will tend to lose these strands of cultural continuity and unravel, if they are not held and consciously braided for strength by ritual, tradition, and the retelling of old stories. As George Santayana had warned, “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And while this heritage is maintained, our community— our society— is therefore nourished, and can flourish.
The study of history then tends to the emotional heritage that we must learn to care about, and care for. At the same time, while accepting this heritage, we must continue the legacy by contributing the vision that we each bring fresh into the world— our own dreams of what can be. Doing this we enter into a healthy and dynamic interchange with life; for as our dreams shape our environment, so our environment will shape our dreams.
According to a wonderful book titled Wisdom Sits in Places, there is an Apache tradition about the accumulation of human experience in certain sacred locations that can be accessed by the sensitive observer. If this is true, Jack London Village is one of the wealthiest locales in the region, and we have much to learn from those who have been here before us. And, taking these lessons to heart, we also have a lot to give while being here— making history ourselves, for those who are yet to arrive.
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This article originally appeared in The Jack London Villager March 2007.