How could we know how the World Wide Web would be upon us? We are choking on the challenges to our precious principals, gnawing political controversy like gum drops. This at a time when a more thoughtful and enlightened society is emerging from the unconscious darkness of the status quo. Modern day mindfulness has entered the main stream arena and is gaining momentum but so is the unmindful, uncritical, political zeitgeist. Within this paradox is a great and fearful ism afflicting us: Presentism. 

Presentism seeks to bring historical events and figures, into the present day political courtroom for moral judgement. Presentism is what you see when statues are vilified and dead people called to account for current affairs and past wrongs. Presentism is a popular form of politicking that has effectively been keeping nations divided for decades.

Approaching our nations past from an unbiased scholarly perspective can be fascinating, illuminating and exciting, even pleasurably quaint. Approached prejudicially it is a force for disconnection, division and witch hunting. With presentism, the history presented is cherry-picked out of context, then examined with an ever narrowing perspective. 

In opposition, to bring a powerful and weighty awareness of the present moment as all there is, drives mindfulness practice. Children in schools and adults in studios and online gather to breathe, meditate, and yoga peacefully together as stranger friends. Mindfulness and presentism are opposing forces. It is unhealthy and unwise to allow the past to cause us suffering. The past cannot be repaired, the players are dead, we can only accept it. 

Yet here we are claiming to seek enlightenment and peace while bathing in our bigotry, all ruffled and unconscious, not thinking for ourselves because we are terrified of being wrong. We fearfully jump onto the bandwagon, our trembling, afraid little hearts breathlessly desperate for approval. It is a great human weakness: un-evolved, primitive, and oppressive. 

If we thought critically about modern day presentism we would see it is aligned with religionism which seeks to explain morality as being established by an entity, remaining unchanged from the beginning of time. By this logic mankind is divided into the saved and the damned, temple slavery is an acceptable framework for modern day worshipers, and human rights would not be any further advanced than in Ancient Rome. This is highly unlikely as humans are changing, ever evolving through experience and our morality evolves with us. Our children are living in a different time and will demonstrate changed values from us, as we did from our parents, and they from theirs. There may be some distant relations in which we can vilify in modern times plucked from the history of every country on earth, but why would we? Leave the witch hunt to the politicians seeking to divide our country. Keep it outside the sphere of peaceful gatherings of enlightened people. The past is gone. It has no power over us. 

An enlightened society must actively challenge societal norms while seeking justice and fostering respect and kindness. There is a frightened little heretic in all of us waiting for the chance to breathe to life our hero heart and challenge the status quo. We are on the cusp, we are waking up, this generation can be a force to reckon with like no other before it. We can be critically “woke”, and mindfully so.