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Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past
" Time Maps extends beyond all of the old clichés about linear, circular, and spiral patterns of historical process and provides us with models of the actual legends used to map history. It is a brilliant and elegant exercise in model building that provides new insights into some of the old questions about philosophy of history, historical narrative, and what is called straight history."-Hayden White, University of California, Santa Cruz
Who were the first people to inhabit North America? Does the West Bank belong to the Arabs or the Jews? Why are racists so obsessed with origins? Is a seventh cousin still a cousin? Why do some societies name their children after dead ancestors?
As Eviatar Zerubavel demonstrates in Time Maps , we cannot answer burning questions such as these without a deeper understanding of how we envision the past. In a pioneering attempt to map the structure of our collective memory, Zerubavel considers the cognitive patterns we use to organize the past in our minds and the mental strategies that help us string together unrelated events into coherent and meaningful narratives, as well as the social grammar of battles over conflicting interpretations of history. Drawing on fascinating examples that range from Hiroshima to the Holocaust, from Columbus to Lucy, and from ancient Egypt to the former Yugoslavia, Zerubavel shows how we construct historical origins; how we tie discontinuous events together into stories; how we link families and entire nations through genealogies; and how we separate distinct historical periods from one another through watersheds, such as the invention of fire or the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Most people think the Roman Empire ended in 476, even though it lasted another 977 years in Byzantium. Challenging such conventional wisdom, Time Maps will be must reading for anyone interested in how the history of our world takes shape.
Who were the first people to inhabit North America? Does the West Bank belong to the Arabs or the Jews? Why are racists so obsessed with origins? Is a seventh cousin still a cousin? Why do some societies name their children after dead ancestors?
As Eviatar Zerubavel demonstrates in Time Maps , we cannot answer burning questions such as these without a deeper understanding of how we envision the past. In a pioneering attempt to map the structure of our collective memory, Zerubavel considers the cognitive patterns we use to organize the past in our minds and the mental strategies that help us string together unrelated events into coherent and meaningful narratives, as well as the social grammar of battles over conflicting interpretations of history. Drawing on fascinating examples that range from Hiroshima to the Holocaust, from Columbus to Lucy, and from ancient Egypt to the former Yugoslavia, Zerubavel shows how we construct historical origins; how we tie discontinuous events together into stories; how we link families and entire nations through genealogies; and how we separate distinct historical periods from one another through watersheds, such as the invention of fire or the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Most people think the Roman Empire ended in 476, even though it lasted another 977 years in Byzantium. Challenging such conventional wisdom, Time Maps will be must reading for anyone interested in how the history of our world takes shape.
187 pages, Paperback
First published May 15, 2003
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October 21, 2024Eviatar Zerubavel (° 1948) offers a structuralist view of the way in which we view the past. This means that he does not focus on the content of remembered past, but on the "underlying formal features of those recollections”. In this little book he combines the postmodernist narrative approach of the American literature specialist Hayden White with the study of collective and individual memories as launched by the French historian Pierre Nora.
The author is a sociologist (Rutgers University, New Jersey), so it’s rather logic that his starting point (and conclusion) is that our approach of the past is socially conditioned: we make instrumental use of the narrative structures that are available in our community. “One of the most remarkable features of human memory is our ability to mentally transform essentially unstructured series or events into seemingly coherent historical narratives. (…) And although actual reality may never be ‘unfolded’ in such a neat formulaic manner, those scriptlike plotlines are nevertheless the form in which we often remember it, as we habitually reduce highly complex event sequences to inevitably simplistic, one-dimensional visions of the past".
Zerubavel elaborates in detail on the narrative forms that we use, classifying them according to linear approach (progress, decline, rise and fall) and multilinear approach (branched like a tree, circular, with mountains and valleys and finally flowing or chopping). Especially these ‘mountains and valleys’ are a remarkable point: we often discern historical periods when apparently nothing (relevant) happened, and peak periods; just think of the Middle Ages, or America of the early 18th century. Every one of us, instinctively uses these kinds of methods of mapping history.
Zerubavel sees two underlying structural approaches: seeing continuity in history or discontinuity. The first translates, for example, into the great importance attached to dynasties and family trees, and into the list of festive and commemorative days and monuments that suggest a continuous link with the past. He rightly points to the wonderful fact that we succeed in drawing a line in history: “Continuous identities are thus products of the mental integration or otherwise disconnected points in time into a seemingly single historical whole. More specifically, it is our memory that makes such mental integration possible, allowing us to establish the distinctly mnemonic illusion of continuity." The original thing is how he distinguishes between 'lumpers' and 'splitters': people who mainly combine phenomena, others who try to distinguish as much as possible, to split them up.
The second, discontinuous way to determine the past is the tendency to distinguish separate time blocks, the famous periodization. This implicitly betrays an opinion about the time period involved and is arbitrary in the sense that it creates an artificial distinction between the moment before and the moment after. "In order to help maintain the illusion of wide historical gaps actually separating different periods from one another, we thus mnemonically inflate the distance between everything that happened prior to the particular ‘watersheds’marking their boundaries and everything that has happened since."
With all these approaches there is a recurring phenomenon: the ways in which we look at the past turn out to be socially conditioned. That does not mean that Zerubavel is deterministic, but he tries to make it clear to us that our vision of history does not just comes out of the blue. Instead, it is strongly colored by the community in which we live, and usually in a way that we do not consciously realize: "Any system of periodization is thus inevitably social, since our ability to envision the historical watersheds separating one conventional ‘period’ from another is basically a product or being socialized into specific traditions or carving the past".
Precisely because our historical approach is so socially determined, it is best, says Zerubavel, that we use several approaches. He therefore argues for a multi-perspective view: “As I have demonstrated throughout this book, there are not only many different patterns or organizing the fits in our heads but also various different methods for arranging each of those specific patterns. Only a pronouncedly multi-perspective look at several such ’maps’ together can provide us with a complete picture of the inevitably multi-layered, multi-faceted social topography of the past.” For a moment I had the impression that the author was in danger of falling into the trap of relativism, but his formulation makes it clear that he is certainly not a supporter of this.
All in all, this very condense booklet offers a particularly relevant view of how different communities look at the past, using different techniques and grids to explain that past. Recommended reading! (rating 3.5 stars, rounded up)
The author is a sociologist (Rutgers University, New Jersey), so it’s rather logic that his starting point (and conclusion) is that our approach of the past is socially conditioned: we make instrumental use of the narrative structures that are available in our community. “One of the most remarkable features of human memory is our ability to mentally transform essentially unstructured series or events into seemingly coherent historical narratives. (…) And although actual reality may never be ‘unfolded’ in such a neat formulaic manner, those scriptlike plotlines are nevertheless the form in which we often remember it, as we habitually reduce highly complex event sequences to inevitably simplistic, one-dimensional visions of the past".
Zerubavel elaborates in detail on the narrative forms that we use, classifying them according to linear approach (progress, decline, rise and fall) and multilinear approach (branched like a tree, circular, with mountains and valleys and finally flowing or chopping). Especially these ‘mountains and valleys’ are a remarkable point: we often discern historical periods when apparently nothing (relevant) happened, and peak periods; just think of the Middle Ages, or America of the early 18th century. Every one of us, instinctively uses these kinds of methods of mapping history.
Zerubavel sees two underlying structural approaches: seeing continuity in history or discontinuity. The first translates, for example, into the great importance attached to dynasties and family trees, and into the list of festive and commemorative days and monuments that suggest a continuous link with the past. He rightly points to the wonderful fact that we succeed in drawing a line in history: “Continuous identities are thus products of the mental integration or otherwise disconnected points in time into a seemingly single historical whole. More specifically, it is our memory that makes such mental integration possible, allowing us to establish the distinctly mnemonic illusion of continuity." The original thing is how he distinguishes between 'lumpers' and 'splitters': people who mainly combine phenomena, others who try to distinguish as much as possible, to split them up.
The second, discontinuous way to determine the past is the tendency to distinguish separate time blocks, the famous periodization. This implicitly betrays an opinion about the time period involved and is arbitrary in the sense that it creates an artificial distinction between the moment before and the moment after. "In order to help maintain the illusion of wide historical gaps actually separating different periods from one another, we thus mnemonically inflate the distance between everything that happened prior to the particular ‘watersheds’marking their boundaries and everything that has happened since."
With all these approaches there is a recurring phenomenon: the ways in which we look at the past turn out to be socially conditioned. That does not mean that Zerubavel is deterministic, but he tries to make it clear to us that our vision of history does not just comes out of the blue. Instead, it is strongly colored by the community in which we live, and usually in a way that we do not consciously realize: "Any system of periodization is thus inevitably social, since our ability to envision the historical watersheds separating one conventional ‘period’ from another is basically a product or being socialized into specific traditions or carving the past".
Precisely because our historical approach is so socially determined, it is best, says Zerubavel, that we use several approaches. He therefore argues for a multi-perspective view: “As I have demonstrated throughout this book, there are not only many different patterns or organizing the fits in our heads but also various different methods for arranging each of those specific patterns. Only a pronouncedly multi-perspective look at several such ’maps’ together can provide us with a complete picture of the inevitably multi-layered, multi-faceted social topography of the past.” For a moment I had the impression that the author was in danger of falling into the trap of relativism, but his formulation makes it clear that he is certainly not a supporter of this.
All in all, this very condense booklet offers a particularly relevant view of how different communities look at the past, using different techniques and grids to explain that past. Recommended reading! (rating 3.5 stars, rounded up)
June 14, 2021
All in all, this is a very short book (barely 110 pages of text, the rest are notes and bibliography), but Zerubavel has packed a lot into it. His approach is ambitious, he wants to show "how the past is registered and organized in our minds". Perhaps that's too ambitious, because his conclusion is actually the same as his starting point, namely that our view of the past is socially determined and uses narrative structures and approaches that are embedded in the community in which we live.
And of course it is. But Zerubavel succeeds in making that theoretical view very illustrative through an apprehensive overview of approaches and techniques of looking at the past, accompanied by a cartload of concrete examples from almost all over the world. In this sense, this work is closely related to that of David Lowenthal. The Past is a Foreign Country - Revisited, which is much more exhaustive and goes even wider, but then again lacks a clear structure; in that sense the two complement each other well.
See my more elaborate review in my History-account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
(rating 3.5 stars, rounded up)
And of course it is. But Zerubavel succeeds in making that theoretical view very illustrative through an apprehensive overview of approaches and techniques of looking at the past, accompanied by a cartload of concrete examples from almost all over the world. In this sense, this work is closely related to that of David Lowenthal. The Past is a Foreign Country - Revisited, which is much more exhaustive and goes even wider, but then again lacks a clear structure; in that sense the two complement each other well.
See my more elaborate review in my History-account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
(rating 3.5 stars, rounded up)
January 8, 2013
Thorough structural analyses are useful for helping us to sift through and deal with several accounts of, roughly, the same facts and events. As with Hayden White’s work, which is an inspiration behind this book, when you have read and thought about the categories that a structuralist analysis offers you it seems difficult to see any other way to think about the information. They appear to have catalogued everything rather persuasively.
Along those lines, Zerubavel offers readers a clear and thorough analysis of the ways in which we go about marking time into continuous and discontinuous periods. For example, the first chapter details the ways in which we think history as progress, decline, zigzag, ladders, trees, circles, rhymes, mountains, valleys, staccato and legato. His elaboration of the differences between how we name and represent historical continuity or discontinuity were particularly interesting. The clarity of Zerubavel’s thinking and writing makes this a very good book for starting to think about the ways in which narrative and language produce the histories that we take for ‘straight facts’.
I think the book has less to offer those who have already seriously grappled with historiographical issues because although the author is trying to make an argument that social practices constitute history (and are therefore worth studying in themselves), the end result of the vast times and spaces that his structural analysis covers is to flatten out a sense of why and for what reasons historical context matters.
For example, in chapter two he draws our attention to the fact that just as ‘the rebels in Chiapas would choose to adopt the name Zapatistas more than seventy years after the death of the revered hero of the Mexican Revolution, Emiliano Zapata … post-Communist Mongolian nationalists [were] led to name a new vodka after their thirteenth-century national hero, Genghis Khan’ (52). He wants to make the point that we make continuity by the names we choose, thereby creating a path through historical events that remembers what we want to remember. At the same time, his analysis strongly suggests that the difference between these acts of remembering and history-making is not significant in itself in the sense that, apparently, people everywhere make up history along similar patterns. But if, as he argues (and I agree), history is a social practice, then those social practices are embedded in and linked with other social practices that give them different weights and intensities in the world. Anti-colonialists do give a different account of the same events than their pro-colonial opponents, even though they often use the same narrative patterns. However, school curriculums, museum exhibitions, public statues and monuments are not open to being shaped equally by both sides in a struggle over history. Of course people tell their different stories using the same structures; but how do they get their stories to matter more than other people’s stories?
In the concluding paragraphs of the book he makes it clear that he has mapped these many models of history because he wants to propose some alternative to the ‘nihilistic ‘postmodern’ critique of historical positivism’ (109). His study of the many ways we all tell the story of time suggests to him ‘there is no good reason not to assume that both the Palestinian and Israeli narratives of the history of Jerusalem are to a large extent factually accurate’ (110). I think that however well intentioned his scholarship aims to be, it is a mistake to dismiss the poststructuralist concern with the politics of knowledge as ‘nihilism’. The Palestinian-Israeli example he references is a representative example of how colonialism engenders real social conditions in which we do not all practice history freely.
Along those lines, Zerubavel offers readers a clear and thorough analysis of the ways in which we go about marking time into continuous and discontinuous periods. For example, the first chapter details the ways in which we think history as progress, decline, zigzag, ladders, trees, circles, rhymes, mountains, valleys, staccato and legato. His elaboration of the differences between how we name and represent historical continuity or discontinuity were particularly interesting. The clarity of Zerubavel’s thinking and writing makes this a very good book for starting to think about the ways in which narrative and language produce the histories that we take for ‘straight facts’.
I think the book has less to offer those who have already seriously grappled with historiographical issues because although the author is trying to make an argument that social practices constitute history (and are therefore worth studying in themselves), the end result of the vast times and spaces that his structural analysis covers is to flatten out a sense of why and for what reasons historical context matters.
For example, in chapter two he draws our attention to the fact that just as ‘the rebels in Chiapas would choose to adopt the name Zapatistas more than seventy years after the death of the revered hero of the Mexican Revolution, Emiliano Zapata … post-Communist Mongolian nationalists [were] led to name a new vodka after their thirteenth-century national hero, Genghis Khan’ (52). He wants to make the point that we make continuity by the names we choose, thereby creating a path through historical events that remembers what we want to remember. At the same time, his analysis strongly suggests that the difference between these acts of remembering and history-making is not significant in itself in the sense that, apparently, people everywhere make up history along similar patterns. But if, as he argues (and I agree), history is a social practice, then those social practices are embedded in and linked with other social practices that give them different weights and intensities in the world. Anti-colonialists do give a different account of the same events than their pro-colonial opponents, even though they often use the same narrative patterns. However, school curriculums, museum exhibitions, public statues and monuments are not open to being shaped equally by both sides in a struggle over history. Of course people tell their different stories using the same structures; but how do they get their stories to matter more than other people’s stories?
In the concluding paragraphs of the book he makes it clear that he has mapped these many models of history because he wants to propose some alternative to the ‘nihilistic ‘postmodern’ critique of historical positivism’ (109). His study of the many ways we all tell the story of time suggests to him ‘there is no good reason not to assume that both the Palestinian and Israeli narratives of the history of Jerusalem are to a large extent factually accurate’ (110). I think that however well intentioned his scholarship aims to be, it is a mistake to dismiss the poststructuralist concern with the politics of knowledge as ‘nihilism’. The Palestinian-Israeli example he references is a representative example of how colonialism engenders real social conditions in which we do not all practice history freely.
September 14, 2023
3.5, quick read.
January 27, 2024
A very readable sociological discussion of collective memory and it's political/public use. Pretty accessible in that it is light on theory and uses frequent real-world examples from a huge variety of historical and geographical contexts in furthering its spatial visualization of memory.
I thought the section on inherited memory verging off into discussions of mono vs. poly-genesis a little lengthy considering the limited bearing on the overall conclusion of the chapter.
Back to the real-world examples tho I really did not need to know that Charles and Camilla's first flirtation involved discussing how their great-grandparents were lovers 🤢.
On a more serious note, considering the intermittent discussion of Zionist historiographical memory constructions and the amnesia required by "ultranationalists" in Israel to stake their claim to Palestinian land I am interested in the author's take on the current genocide. . . While there seemed to be some recognition of the modern state of Israel as a settler colonial project I would have liked this text to consider more deeply the how memory/collective memory is utilised by capitalist imperial powers (the "West") to further individual nationalist agendas on a global scale via localised conflicts (not sure I'm explaining this properly so may come back to edit later).
I thought the section on inherited memory verging off into discussions of mono vs. poly-genesis a little lengthy considering the limited bearing on the overall conclusion of the chapter.
Back to the real-world examples tho I really did not need to know that Charles and Camilla's first flirtation involved discussing how their great-grandparents were lovers 🤢.
On a more serious note, considering the intermittent discussion of Zionist historiographical memory constructions and the amnesia required by "ultranationalists" in Israel to stake their claim to Palestinian land I am interested in the author's take on the current genocide. . . While there seemed to be some recognition of the modern state of Israel as a settler colonial project I would have liked this text to consider more deeply the how memory/collective memory is utilised by capitalist imperial powers (the "West") to further individual nationalist agendas on a global scale via localised conflicts (not sure I'm explaining this properly so may come back to edit later).
September 26, 2020
In general, this is an interesting and accessible book. I read it during my introduction to memory studies.
The first thing I want to say is, due to it's attention to how ancestry is remembered, is able to fill a hole that exists in, for example, Halbwachs' theory of collective memory. Halbwachs has a notion of family memory, religious memory, and aristocratic memory. James Fentress and Chris Wickham talk about peasant memory, working-class memory, national memory, women's memory. Neither has a direct way to talk about race or ethnicity. There are indirect or analogical paths, obviously, but Zerubavel's framework for understanding ancestry and memory is a much more direct path. I think, as far as theoretical works go, this is a good introduction to this problem.
The second thing is that this book fits into conversations about formal narrative structures (for example, books by Hayden White). And I think it is an antidote to the notion, pushed by some postmodernists, that ordinary people are suspicious of *ALL* metanarratives.
There are occasions where my eyebrow raises, but they aren't as important as this book's strengths.
The first thing I want to say is, due to it's attention to how ancestry is remembered, is able to fill a hole that exists in, for example, Halbwachs' theory of collective memory. Halbwachs has a notion of family memory, religious memory, and aristocratic memory. James Fentress and Chris Wickham talk about peasant memory, working-class memory, national memory, women's memory. Neither has a direct way to talk about race or ethnicity. There are indirect or analogical paths, obviously, but Zerubavel's framework for understanding ancestry and memory is a much more direct path. I think, as far as theoretical works go, this is a good introduction to this problem.
The second thing is that this book fits into conversations about formal narrative structures (for example, books by Hayden White). And I think it is an antidote to the notion, pushed by some postmodernists, that ordinary people are suspicious of *ALL* metanarratives.
There are occasions where my eyebrow raises, but they aren't as important as this book's strengths.
November 14, 2019
Very helpful if you are interested in the subject. Zerubavel maps several way in which we as individuals and as communities tend to organize our memories and historical narratives; think epochs in ones life and progress/decline structures. It stands on itself very well, but is very basic in its approach, a foundational work more than an in depth analysis of the dynamics and consequences of the matter discussed. If you are going for a deep dive I recommend it as supplementary reading to theories of Identity Construction through Narrative (think Ricoeur).
September 10, 2010
Wonderful sociological book on the collective memory of communities and how they shape their history. It's a very quick read. I think it is only 110 pages. The other 80 pages are the bib, notes and index. But VERY facinating. Something that you will read and re-read. It's esepecially if you have an interest in history and sociology. It's got both disciplines represented in Zerubavel's theory.
August 23, 2018
Models of Social Time
An important aspect of self identity is how we place ourselves and our culture wrt other times. Do we see ourselves in terms of a linearly manifest destiny, either a rise to a golden age, a fall to inevitable chaos or a zig zag path of ups and downs? Does history consist of repeating cycles, grander analogies to the week or the year? Or, as the book suggests, do we adopt George Cuvier's multilinear historical narrative - evolution is not a series of straight lines (which may be a personal perspective) but an expanding bush?
It's a short but rather appealing book. The author is well versed in his subject and offers a large number of provocative ideas with first class examples. One of the must intriguing notions is that of a relief map of the world where physical elevation is replaced by historical import and the frequency/intensity of available reporting. Thus the 8th, 10th, 12th and 14th centuries would be virtually flat as as there is (he argues) little in the record, but the two World Wars would create a mountain range across Europe into Russia, North Africa and the Far East. Ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt and Israel would form an archipelago, with active volcanoes in China and India. Though suggested as an thought experiment, IMV it would be both feasible and fascinating as an online tool for visualizing history, an updated version of and could be used to focus either on particular eras or points of view, ie: history in relation to the French or the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Another important idea is how societies bridge themselves as a continuation of things past. Zerubavel looked at over 190 countries and found that most had some pattern of holidays that ritually synchronize the calendar year with a sequence of historic events. Memorabilia either real or reproduced also functions as tools for connectedness, as does ancestry, either by blood relation, culture or ideology. He also notes the social significance of how we break up events or lump them together. The Nazis looked on WW II as a continuation of WW I which never ended and the Shah of Iran portrayed himself as a successor to Cyrus some 2600 years ago, even though his own "dynasty" only extended back to his father.
Lots of good references at the end for related reading, including May & Neustadt's Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers. Recommended.
An important aspect of self identity is how we place ourselves and our culture wrt other times. Do we see ourselves in terms of a linearly manifest destiny, either a rise to a golden age, a fall to inevitable chaos or a zig zag path of ups and downs? Does history consist of repeating cycles, grander analogies to the week or the year? Or, as the book suggests, do we adopt George Cuvier's multilinear historical narrative - evolution is not a series of straight lines (which may be a personal perspective) but an expanding bush?
It's a short but rather appealing book. The author is well versed in his subject and offers a large number of provocative ideas with first class examples. One of the must intriguing notions is that of a relief map of the world where physical elevation is replaced by historical import and the frequency/intensity of available reporting. Thus the 8th, 10th, 12th and 14th centuries would be virtually flat as as there is (he argues) little in the record, but the two World Wars would create a mountain range across Europe into Russia, North Africa and the Far East. Ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt and Israel would form an archipelago, with active volcanoes in China and India. Though suggested as an thought experiment, IMV it would be both feasible and fascinating as an online tool for visualizing history, an updated version of and could be used to focus either on particular eras or points of view, ie: history in relation to the French or the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Another important idea is how societies bridge themselves as a continuation of things past. Zerubavel looked at over 190 countries and found that most had some pattern of holidays that ritually synchronize the calendar year with a sequence of historic events. Memorabilia either real or reproduced also functions as tools for connectedness, as does ancestry, either by blood relation, culture or ideology. He also notes the social significance of how we break up events or lump them together. The Nazis looked on WW II as a continuation of WW I which never ended and the Shah of Iran portrayed himself as a successor to Cyrus some 2600 years ago, even though his own "dynasty" only extended back to his father.
Lots of good references at the end for related reading, including May & Neustadt's Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers. Recommended.
November 29, 2020
A little thick but super interesting on how history and memory is formed at an individual and societal level , will come back again for many years to come
May 10, 2021
Strong late 60s/early 70s dissertation feel to this...idiosyncratic work. Not unrelated: “pronouncedly” appears 31 times in this brief monograph. dnf
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February 28, 2023Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past by Eviatar Zerubavel (2004)
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November 4, 2025Bummer.
January 19, 2016
I remember reading this
That's a pun, my title. The social construct of time and memory come together in this analysis. How does collective memory come to define time differently in different societies? How do such memories keep the social bonds?
A good read. Fascinating and solid and easy to understand. Brings the reader to question what family stories, what communal definitions of time and place, have shaped him/her, without ever directly asking those questions. Demands deconstruction of our societal memory and how it is used -- for strength and perhaps in weakness.
That's a pun, my title. The social construct of time and memory come together in this analysis. How does collective memory come to define time differently in different societies? How do such memories keep the social bonds?
A good read. Fascinating and solid and easy to understand. Brings the reader to question what family stories, what communal definitions of time and place, have shaped him/her, without ever directly asking those questions. Demands deconstruction of our societal memory and how it is used -- for strength and perhaps in weakness.
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