The past is valuable only as it enters the present, not as rival ideal.

Evidence

An individual can live only in the present. The present is not just something which comes after the past; much less something produced by it. It is what life is in leaving the past behind it. The study of past products will not help us to understand the present. A knowledge of the past and its heritage is of great significance when it enters into the present, but not otherwise. And the mistake of making the records and remains of the past the main material of education is that it tends to make the past a rival of the present and the present a more or less futile imitation of the past. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1021

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The past is only meaningful through the end one currently chooses — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1183; The compulsion power of one’s past derives from free choice, not its content — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1194; The past informs the individual but can be re-captured through successive choices. (+2 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The past is only meaningful through the end one currently chooses — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1183; The compulsion power of one’s past derives from free choice, not its content — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1194; The past informs the individual but can be re-captured through successive choices. (+2 more)