Lewis Lapham Summary

Per Lewis H. Lapham, the record is our inheritance, the one that Goethe had in mind when he suggested a restructuring of the deal that Satan offered Faust. It isn’t with magic that men make their immortality. They do so with what they’ve learned on their travels across the frontiers of five millennia, salvaging from the ruin of families and the death of cities what they find to be useful or beautiful or true. We have nothing else with which to build the future except the lumber of the past—history exploited as natural resource and applied technology, telling us that the story painted on the old walls and printed in the old books is also our own (Lewis H. Lapham, 2007).
I believe Lewis Lapham is trying to get others to see how we can’t outright