I love history. For history to exist, something must have been preserved, if only in writing. Still, one conserves best by forging ahead.
A conquered people might persist despite their subjugation. But what of those whose cities, as was common in ancient warfare (and perhaps in the coming age of digital/global warfare too), were sacked, pillaged, and razed to the ground—utterly annihilated by invaders wielding weapons heavier than the pen? In the era of city-states, such destruction did not merely mean the loss of a homeland but often the erasure of an entire culture (try reading a book on the history of Carthage). How many peoples and cultures once existed that have since vanished from the collective memory of all our written and oral history!
If you wish to be well-remembered in history tomorrow, you must seek victory today.
That is, O Westerner, despite the seeming lateness of the Western hour, the Greeks and Romans are not our heritage. Their victories are our heritage! Had they lost—had they known only defeat without the triumphs that allowed them to endure—we would have inherited nothing from them at all.
By all means, preserve and conserve! But let it be like stretching—a warm-up for the day’s creation, the day’s victory, which works toward preserving tomorrow too.