A grandfather's books — and other gifts from the past

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Midway through 2020 I inherited a rather extensive collection of classical literature from my grandfather. The collection, "Great Books of the Western World," was a curation of the most essential works produced by Western culture up until the 20th century, as selected, ultimately, by its editor Mortimer J. Adler.

The collection contained everything from sonnets and science to literature and economics, government and history. As far as I was concerned, there could not have been a more perfect time for those books to arrive in my life. With the pandemic and lockdowns limiting my opportunities to socialize, I had ample time to explore this new world I had been given. I like to think that I made the most of the opportunity and consumed as much of the West's epochal wisdom as I could.

Among my many initial impressions, what stood out the most was that this new world, full of old ideas, was surprisingly modern. And the world I was familiar with, here in the 21st century, was still littered with challenges and conversations of the past, dating back to antiquity.

Assuming that classical literature is dated because of its age is foolish. Sure, some of the original ideas as they arose in their infancy are less relevant today, but even those provide valuable lessons. Take for example, the explanations of nature made by the Roman Lucretius (died about 50 B.C.).

We know now that the sky does not rotate about the Earth due to wind currents, as Lucretius thought, but the creative thinking and logical reasoning supporting those observations was brilliant. Rather than submitting to the common convention of his day, that deities guided all natural forces, he reasoned through observation (ahem, the scientific method). And while he was incorrect in his hypothesis regarding the sky, he did reason out a number of other natural phenomena, like the concept of elements and atoms, that are supported by modern science today.

It has taken many human lifetimes to advance our notions of government, science and art into their current form. Ideas that we accept as obvious today were not always so — equal rights, free government and the injustice of slavery, to name a few. They were slowly developed over hundreds, thousands of years, as they passed through the sieve of genius and were left further refined in later years.

But genius and originality are rare, and despite our desire to believe ourselves sophisticated, we have not ventured as far from our base humanity as we might think.

All of this is to say that it's important to know where our culture comes from and why it is as we experience it today. There are reasons for its existence and its shape, and those reasons have been extensively discussed. The conclusions that have been derived from those discussions need not be final, but the majority of ideals produced should not be lightly tossed aside either.

So it worries me to see political factions, on both the right and left, attacking the liberal ideals of Western culture without reasonable, or at times any, resistance from their associates. Close-minded polarization in general is an act against these ideals, and ideologies concerning individual liberties, lockdowns and freedom to marry who we want are among the most obvious infringements of them.

Strict adherence to customary modes of thinking is an efficient means to halt innovation. Change for the sake of having something other than what we've got is an equally effective method.

Maybe, as we emerge from another election season peppered with promises of change, we should spend more time reflecting on the past before we attempt to move forward.