Among the most important features of a successful society is the effort to preserve its history and safeguard the heritage that must be transmitted from one generation to the next. If one generation fails to pass on this heritage—which includes stories and legends, heroes, and the memory of a people’s history and culture—or refuses to do so in the name of modernity, the next generation will inevitably suffer from a loss of ideals, direction, and understanding of its own identity, and the roots of that society will begin to decay.

The truth is that cultures that take an axe to the roots of their own history are not in the process of dying; they are already dead, because they will no longer have stories or epics left to sing.

“Winston Churchill”