Time & Perspective Quote by Andrew Cohen

Cohen’s line tries to do two things at once: acknowledge the reality of injustice while nudging the listener toward a spiritual frame that risks making injustice feel optional. The first clause is deliberately awkward - “injustices of the past that did exist” - as if he’s preempting denial while also stepping around blame. It’s a rhetorical throat-clear: yes, history happened, and yes, it’s happening now. Then comes the pivot, and it’s the pivot that does the real work.

“Be willing to give up” is not the language of reparations, policy, or accountability; it’s the language of interior practice. In Cohen’s spiritual-modernist register, liberation isn’t primarily something you win in the streets or legislate in a chamber. It’s a condition of consciousness. That’s the subtext: the suffering is real, but the binding power of suffering is negotiable.

The second sentence pushes that negotiation into metaphysics. “When we become interested in liberation” functions like a gatekeeping phrase - if you disagree with the move to “that which transcends time,” you’re positioned as insufficiently committed to liberation itself. “Transcends time” is the big promise: escape the looping cycles of grievance, identity, and historical injury by relocating the center of gravity to something timeless.

Contextually, this fits a late-20th/early-21st century spiritual discourse that borrows the moral urgency of social justice while redirecting its endpoint: from structural change to individual awakening. It’s compelling because it offers relief from the exhausting permanence of injustice. It’s also provocative because “transcendence” can sound like a polished synonym for looking away.