America Coping With In-the-past-ness
What America Can Learn From Germany
The English Language is a Germanic language, which means English shares ancestral relations to German. I only studied two years of German, but I’ve spoken American English my whole life.
During my short two-year stint in high school taking German, one thing I learned about the German language was that you can build some big compound words. Something English can also do, which may come from its Germanic roots. But, it’s not a popular past-time for us.
Just consider words such as doghouse or birdhouse, even cathouse, all come from the Germanic ability to create compound words by combining words together.
Most English compound words are two-word compounds. Like, a ball of snow is a snowball, a fire in a camp is a campfire, and so on. Of course, we have longer ones, like “whatchamacallit (what-you-may-call-it),” but the longer ones aren’t so common.
Mark Twain said, “Some German words are so long that they have a perspective.”
In a recent LinkedIn discussion thread about challenges Westerners face doing business in China, a German participant suggested American’s are more prone to challenges than Germans for two reasons, 1) With English being the lingua franca in Business, it offers no incentive for Americans to learn other languages, and 2) Americans have no “Vergangenheitsbewältigung.”
Unfortunately, my two years of German offered little help to understand this German compound word, staring at me in the post. And worse yet, there was no English translation. But, since I’m not one to shirk from a linguistic challenge, the language explorer in me took to surfing.
I began researching the word and found the meaning quite clear-cut. The root of Vergangenheit is vergangen, meaning: ‘in the far past, already happened, or history,‘ and heit means ‘ness,’ denoting a state of something.
So vergangenheits means “in-the-past-ness,” or the state of in the past.
Bewältigung, means to cope with difficulty. And, this usage of bewältigung, takes on the idea of coping with a ‘national crisis’ of sorts. For the Germans, that crisis was the Holocaust.
Coping with In-the-past-ness
To the Germans, Vergangenheitsbewältigung—coping with in-the-past-ness, speaks to analyzing, digesting, and learning to live with the past. In China, they may consider the Cultural Revolution something historical that they are still working through. It is easy, and not unusual, to find similar challenges throughout human history.
Each of us has dark corners to our histories—individual, family, community, and national—some of our own, and some we share with others. And yet some, we may have never taken part in, but they are part of our “history.”
Many of us share historical trauma. And we may act it out through a variety of emotional responses, such as anger, avoidance, denial, or dealing healthily.
Anger is, of course, the most destructive. It is a culmination of denial and the inability to face difficult historical realities. Those of which, when not dealt with healthily, fester like a cancerous growth, eating away the fibres of a healthy society.
When the German gentleman shared his perspective that Americans lack a “Vergangenheitsbewältigung—coping with ‘national’ in-the-past-ness,” he spoke from a place of empathy. Much like a recovered addict gazing at someone still using while blurting out justifications. He glimpsed into a country divided and in peril, from a space of “been there done that.”
The reasons for the present-day divisions rooted in our American past are things we all share. Including the fear of analysing, digesting, and learning to live with our past—to achieve peace and harmony from its tight grip.
I’ve sought psychologists and therapists to deal with personal challenges. Much of which stemmed from family and society—fear of failure, self loathing, a sense of inadequacy. And I found the inner strength to do what was right. I knew I would be a better person in the end. I guess what I’m saying is, I’ve coped with ‘my own’ in-the-past-ness.
The German Blueprint
Vergangenheitsbewältigung is marked by learning from the past, in ways such as honestly admitting that such a past did indeed exist, attempting to remedy as far as possible the wrongs committed, and attempting to move on from that past. (Cite: Wikipedia)
The important players that began the move to healing the National wound in Germany left by the Holocaust were churches, schools, philosophical circles, and cultural spheres.
Perhaps Pope Francis’ visit to Canada, to apologize for the atrocities committed to the Canadian Indigenous children by the Catholic church, is a start at a Canadian “coping with our national in-the-past-ness?”
Yet, as with any Salem Witchhunt, history shows those hollering “witchhunt!” are the perpetrators. Those who, for self gain, throw out shiny objects to divert the attention of the simpleminded common folk. They do all they can to maintain the attention of those simpleminded individuals steadfastly and far away from the truth.
America—a nation. The United States—a land filled with diversity already when the Europeans arrived—bringing along with them Old World cultural and religious baggage, most with which we have yet to deal.
Only later did they bring from far-off countries more people of diversity enslaved to build a nation.
Are we yet to where we can work through the challenges of “coping with our national in-the-past-ness?”
As a young nation, we have much to learn. Just like a teenager viewing his or her parents or grandparents erroneously sensing they understand more than these older generations did. We, as a nation, also express a sense of youthful ignorance of things of history and life experience.
Some think by changing the narrative, they achieve changing the truth, even reality. Luckily, that is not the tenet on which reality is based.
Some may pull the wool over the eyes of the unsuspecting—but attempts to hijack history only end in chaos and failure. History shows many feeble attempts to do so fail.
Perhaps we consider learning from the linguistic habits of those whose language has long influenced our own. Learn from the mindset of a country who recognized history as something unchangeable that needs to be reconciled. Accepting the only path to save their sense of national pride was face up to the past. A past they found shameful, a past they refused to hide behind.
When we face our own failures, we find peace and a path to success. But when we choose finger pointing and blaming others for our failures, we feed the cancer eating us from within.
Let 2023 be the year when America finds a path to “coping with our national in-the-past-ness!”
Todd Cornell is the author of Heart Of China, How Mindfulness Changed My Life.
See my personal collection of Cultural Revolution artifacts at:
Visit my website: www.cultur668.com
Such a meaningful piece, Todd! So timely and important for us. Oh wow ... you have many more to read. Thank You for sharing your perspective and wisdom. Ordering your book in the morning. Sooo many questions for you... :-)