Accepting the Past, Facing the Future
One of the most provocative approaches to this question comes from Friedrich Nietzsche, whose doctrine of the eternal return asks this: “What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’”? To ask myself the question of the eternal return is to wonder about the worth of what I have done, to inquire whether it would stand the test of being done innumerable times again.
.. Had Hitler not come to power in Germany, the Holocaust and World War II would not have happened. Had World War II not have happened, my father would not have signed up for officer’s training school. Had he not signed up, he would not have gone to college, majored in economics, and then moved to New York for a job. And so he would not have met my mother. In short, without the Holocaust I would not be here.
.. It’s unfortunate that our existence had to arise this way, but since that’s the way it happened, affirming our existence requires affirming the past that led to it. It is no wonder that he calls his position one of “modest nihilism.”
.. If we would be willing to sacrifice our existence for the sake of preventing past horrors, what would we be willing to sacrifice of ourselves to prevent horrors now and in the future? And why are so many of us (and I include myself here) not doing so?