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No action or event ever happens in a vacuum. There are always multiple contributing factors which influence our choices at any given moment, a great many of which are shaped by the world around us and beyond our direct control. Decisions and actions which make perfect sense in one context can seem drastically different in another. One of the side effects of having access to everything at the same time is that it tends to strip away the context which is critical to genuine understanding.
An online post by Andrew J. Street mentioning an interview he did with Brian Eno has been circulating a fair bit as of late. Within Street’s reflections on the interview there is a key piece to understanding the complicated and confusing debates around how to handle things of the past during times of progressive social change.
The interview happened several years ago but a comment Eno made has stayed with him. Eno spoke about how his daughters listened to music from all sorts of eras without any timeline or context because everything was equally available to them. In Eno’s words, ‘Everything was present’ as far as they were concerned.
Street now sees in the remarks an insight into all of the contention and confusion around how to address materials and events from the past which are now viewed, or in many…