In the fourth age we created deserts. Our deserts were of several kinds, but they had one thing in common: nothing grew there. Some were made of cement, some were made of various poisons, some of baked earth. We made these deserts from the desire for more money and from despair at the lack of it.
This line shows us how the new money god has been destroying the home of humanity and how we will be left with nothing if we continue.
In the first age, we created gods. We carved them out of wood; there was still such a thing as wood, then. We forged them from shining metals and painted them on temple walls.
This line talks about how humanity created Gods and represented them through many different materials. They later talk about how there were many different gods with different personalities. This first paragraph show the reader how humanity has always developed faith in something powerful, no matter the age or people.
The first clue that memory and imagining the future might go hand in hand came from amnesia patients. When they lost their pasts, it seemed, they lost their futures as well.
This line and the lines after it show us how important remembering the past can be as not having them can close off the future for us
Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia, because humans predict what the future will be like by using their memories.
The author is asking the audience to predict the future by looking at the past. This first line already reminds me of Toni Morrison's piece "Be your own Story" from last week where she was telling her audience the same thing: the past holds the answers to the future
And besides, contrary to what you may have heard or learned, the past is not done and it is not over, it’s still in process, which is another way of saying that when it’s critiqued, analyzed, it yields new information about itself. The past is already changing as it is being reexamined, as it is being listened to for deeper resonances. Actually it can be more liberating than any imagined future if you are willing to identify its evasions, its distortions, its lies, and are willing to unleash its secrets
Toni really emphasizes the point that the past can hold the answers we are looking for if we are able to see past what isn't important/ what is already examined. She is telling the audience that reexamining the past can bring about answers that may bring hope to those that find them
Maybe the past offers a better venue. You already share an old tradition of an uncompromisingly intellectual women’s college, and that past and that tradition is important to both understand and preserve. It’s worthy of reverence and transmission.
In these lines, Toni brings up the past as a possible avenue for answers and/or guidance. I agree with her because, as the saying goes, "History repeats itself"