the past IS that important

On Monday we had a discussion about two quotes: "images of the past embodied in language" versus "old language is a barrier to modern progress". The second quote immediately struck me. We can't live in the past, so I thought I agreed with this quote. When I thought about it more, I didn't think the same way. 

Where would we be without the past? I feel that everything is judged from the past. Thinking outside the language aspect... for example, who would you trust more? A doctor with a PhD in his specialty or a doctor with only a high school diploma? When you think about Europe, what is the thing that attracts most people? Most would say the history. Europe has been around for thousands of years, the U.S. is only hundreds of years old. We value the past, the past carries so much significance. It's the same thing with language. Of course we all have to "keep up" with each other nowadays so it would be helpful for people to all speak the same language. When I think about European languages such as Gaelic, I think of tradition. Only the people that have lived there their whole lives know the language and all of its dialects and the slang terms. It's something that is so special and without Latin and Old English, I feel like we would have no growth. Everything is based off of something, so if we had no starting point, how could we grow?