1. Great men throughout history were often haunted by ghosts of dead ancestors, who reminded them of a noble birthright as well as their own inadequacies

This cultivated a sense of responsibility-not unlike Burke’s intergenerational obligation- connecting the past to the future

2. George S. Patton believed his heroic Southern forbears were always watching over him, judging, inspiring, and reproving. He felt their presence on the battlefield and privately admitted that they helped steel his nerve.

This was a source of courage and discipline.

3. We live in an age where that connective tissue between the past and the future is quickly eroding in those places where it hasn’t already been severed altogether...

4. To adherents of the Gospel of Progress, this severing and subsequent blind sprint into the future has unleashed great human potential and societal “advancement.”

And yet every now and again, ghosts of the past visit us and we are reminded of our own inadequacies...

5. Sometimes we grasp the selfish insanity of embezzling our intergenerational obligation, or we recognize that our sense of moral superiority, self-importance, and wisdom are illusory. Every now and then we realize that unless we act courageously now, our posterity is doomed...

6. I believe we must commune with our forbears from the past and strive to recover that duty we have to them. This will not only imbue us with wisdom and courage, but help us cultivate and protect our own descendants, and in turn, the future of our civilization.