 | PERSPECTIVES ON THE PAST
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William McNeill, Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago
An historian of course, lives through time himself and the world changes in the course of a lifetime as long as mine quite drastically, really very drastically so that your awareness, your sensibility is your expectations, your consciousness will alter if you keep reading and keep listening and keep talking to people across 60 or 80 years very considerably so that the observer has aÉhas where a platform which is constantly transformed by the very fact that heÕs alive.
ItÕs a new world but itÕs the same principle. We are communicating with the people around us, the people around us communicate with the people around them. ItÕs a web thatÕs been there from the very beginning of humankind and itÕs kept us as one species, itÕs kept us as one adventure upon earth.
So youÕre never the same twice. ItÉ. No day youÕre quite the same person. Your sensibilities and what you can see in the world will alter depending on what youÕre looking for, and of course history changes as well so youÕre looking back upon a change where theseÉ the processes were constantly going on. Your sensibilities constantly changed and thus history will always going to have to be rewrittenÑalways.
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