Future oriented societies have a progressive view of history.
Both wear deterministic blinders.
Present based societies, in contrast, avoid historicism of any kind.
Past oriented societies are constrained by the lessons of history.
Future oriented societies feel beyond the lessons of history.
Both fail to learn from the lessons of history.
Present based societies, in contrast, adapt historical lessons to changing conditions.
Past oriented societies have strictly delimited aspirations.
Future oriented societies are driven by boundless ambition.
Both have unrealistic expectations that must inevitably fail.
Present based societies, in contrast, align goals with circumstances.
Past oriented societies take care not to defy the past.
Future oriented societies take care not to compromise the future.
Both qualify the significance of the existing state of affairs.
Present based societies, in contrast, take responsibility for the present.
Societies, like individuals, have psycho-temporal orientations, a place on the continuum of time where attention dwells and meaning is sought out, which can be roughly categorized as either in the past, future, or present. This is just a construct, of course, but a useful one for refining our collective self-image. Looking at temporal dispositions may reveal that conservative risk-aversion as anxiety fed rumination over the past or that expansive ambition as unsustainable megalomaniac zeal. And it may reveal the reality that lies in the healthy balance between past and future. Where are we?
Just as a kind of intellectual insecurity breeds conspiracy theory thinking, explanatory frameworks whereby little or nothing is left to chance, so does societal insecurity lead to narratives of history invested with guiding trends and purposeful patterns. The role of contingency and human agency have no place save as surface perturbations already accounted for in the model. Traditional societies find their pattern of history expressed in the customs, habits, rituals, and myths that define their past and structure their present. Accordingly, history becomes cyclical. Society moves forward, events transpire, but there is always a return to the place of beginning. Contemporary Western society, if we can be forgiven such a generalization, has found its pattern of history expressed in expansiveness and growing complexity, a sense of forward moving progress. What came before is not held onto, not returned to, but is cast off in favor of the next thing. What sustains the past based society is the durability of its history; and what sustains contemporary Western society is the promise of its future.
This promise is written into our image of history as progress. What the nature of this progress is is beside the point here, which is simply that there is a perceived pattern of ascent that can be characterized variably, sometimes as progress, or expansion, growth, complexity and so forth. And there is a comfort in this promise, in the inevitability the trend suggests, just as the past-oriented cultures are grounded by the durability of tradition and the inevitability of cyclical return. There is a danger in believing such a promise, however, a danger in reading history in the first place since there is nothing written into it beyond the story we want it to tell. Both past oriented and future oriented societies seek comfort in historicism whereby everything happens according to some immutable principle or logic inhering in the nature of nature. For the former, the principle is discerned at the level of nature's unending cyclicality, and for the latter, for us, the guiding principle is identified at the level of its unending evolution. Our destinies are united with the expanding cosmos since we ourselves, as Carl Sagan said, are starstuff.
But such principled patterns—seasons, evolution, universal expansion,—though legitimate concepts for understanding nature, are only beguiling metaphors for understanding the nature of human events. We adapt them to fulfill the mythic needs of time and place. And such historicist metaphors are not harmless. Relying on the story of history, which is really the fairytale we put ourselves to sleep to, distorts our perception of events and handicaps our capacity for corrective action. That is, deviations from the trend become marginalized as anomalies, crises and wars passing quirks, and the appropriate response essentially should be, must be, and always is, more of the same. The anomalies pile up until they overwhelm the carrying capacity of mass delusion. But by that time it's already too late.
When societies at such temporal extremes are tested, whether traditional societies by breaks in dependable cycles, or modern societies by stagnation, historicism functions as a mechanism of denial. Rather than confronting and understanding a challenge to the existing state of affairs, and considering adaptive responses, difficulties are overcome by incorporation as plot twists in the story to which we already know the ending. Unseasonably dry weather can be resolved with a traditional rain-dance ritual, and persistent unemployment with sophisticated monetary manipulations. Tradition has always worked for past-based cultures, and growth has never ceased for future-based cultures. But sometimes the rain does not come for too long, and the unemployed masses grow into a volatile force of political explosiveness. The historicist tale occasionally plays catch-up with events only to find mass starvation and revolution in the breach.
Maybe the village will have enough survivors, when the rains do finally come, to rebuild, just as civilization so far has been able to put the pieces back together following its wars and environmental catastrophes. But history will not be learned from. The rain-dance will only be updated, and civilization will again be conceived as the vehicle of infinite growth, and society will be once more organized to that end. But, as Ronald Wright points out, each time history repeats itself, the price goes up. Globalization is raising the stakes of the historicist gamble. When it is the global village that waits for the growth that does not come, that continues the same tired policy rain-dances instead of adapting and seeking real solutions, there may not be enough left over, in the end, to rebuild—and if there is, it will be on unimaginable time-scales.
Why don't we learn? Traditional societies are constrained by the lessons of history. Periods of hardship or crisis will tend to reinforce traditional practices because custom and ritual are its lifeblood, the source of confidence and stability. Future based societies, on the other hand, are not constrained by historical lessons but have instead cultivated a self-image fundamentally beyond them. Conditions now are so different, so far advanced beyond anything that came before, history becomes something with little or nothing to teach us—it is, in a word, irrelevant. History is no more than a data mine to tease out the blueprint of our inexorable progress. Analyses that draw historical parallels, say to the Roman Empire or Easter Island, are at best mere rhetorical gimmicks. Perspectives that position contemporary society not as the soaring eagle it imagines itself to be but the cresting wave it is have no place in the future oriented society. One has better odds convincing preliterates to quit the rain dancing and devote whatever energy remains to relocating their village.
Serial failure and disaster are inevitable when the societal goals are pitched to the extremes of the past and the future, from conservative stasis to unceasing growth. Such projects, like the War on Terror, are definitional failures. And not only is the ultimate objective misconceived, existing conditions are qualified as unimportant and the sense of responsibility for them, which otherwise might mitigate ruin, is abdicated. If events develop essentially as part of an organic process, according to principles beyond our ken written into nature itself, the sense of agency evaporates. The best that can be done is precisely what must not be allowed to happen: preservation of the status quo.
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Just as a kind of intellectual insecurity breeds conspiracy theory thinking, explanatory frameworks whereby little or nothing is left to chance, so does societal insecurity lead to narratives of history invested with guiding trends and purposeful patterns. The role of contingency and human agency have no place save as surface perturbations already accounted for in the model. Traditional societies find their pattern of history expressed in the customs, habits, rituals, and myths that define their past and structure their present. Accordingly, history becomes cyclical. Society moves forward, events transpire, but there is always a return to the place of beginning. Contemporary Western society, if we can be forgiven such a generalization, has found its pattern of history expressed in expansiveness and growing complexity, a sense of forward moving progress. What came before is not held onto, not returned to, but is cast off in favor of the next thing. What sustains the past based society is the durability of its history; and what sustains contemporary Western society is the promise of its future.
This promise is written into our image of history as progress. What the nature of this progress is is beside the point here, which is simply that there is a perceived pattern of ascent that can be characterized variably, sometimes as progress, or expansion, growth, complexity and so forth. And there is a comfort in this promise, in the inevitability the trend suggests, just as the past-oriented cultures are grounded by the durability of tradition and the inevitability of cyclical return. There is a danger in believing such a promise, however, a danger in reading history in the first place since there is nothing written into it beyond the story we want it to tell. Both past oriented and future oriented societies seek comfort in historicism whereby everything happens according to some immutable principle or logic inhering in the nature of nature. For the former, the principle is discerned at the level of nature's unending cyclicality, and for the latter, for us, the guiding principle is identified at the level of its unending evolution. Our destinies are united with the expanding cosmos since we ourselves, as Carl Sagan said, are starstuff.
But such principled patterns—seasons, evolution, universal expansion,—though legitimate concepts for understanding nature, are only beguiling metaphors for understanding the nature of human events. We adapt them to fulfill the mythic needs of time and place. And such historicist metaphors are not harmless. Relying on the story of history, which is really the fairytale we put ourselves to sleep to, distorts our perception of events and handicaps our capacity for corrective action. That is, deviations from the trend become marginalized as anomalies, crises and wars passing quirks, and the appropriate response essentially should be, must be, and always is, more of the same. The anomalies pile up until they overwhelm the carrying capacity of mass delusion. But by that time it's already too late.
When societies at such temporal extremes are tested, whether traditional societies by breaks in dependable cycles, or modern societies by stagnation, historicism functions as a mechanism of denial. Rather than confronting and understanding a challenge to the existing state of affairs, and considering adaptive responses, difficulties are overcome by incorporation as plot twists in the story to which we already know the ending. Unseasonably dry weather can be resolved with a traditional rain-dance ritual, and persistent unemployment with sophisticated monetary manipulations. Tradition has always worked for past-based cultures, and growth has never ceased for future-based cultures. But sometimes the rain does not come for too long, and the unemployed masses grow into a volatile force of political explosiveness. The historicist tale occasionally plays catch-up with events only to find mass starvation and revolution in the breach.
Maybe the village will have enough survivors, when the rains do finally come, to rebuild, just as civilization so far has been able to put the pieces back together following its wars and environmental catastrophes. But history will not be learned from. The rain-dance will only be updated, and civilization will again be conceived as the vehicle of infinite growth, and society will be once more organized to that end. But, as Ronald Wright points out, each time history repeats itself, the price goes up. Globalization is raising the stakes of the historicist gamble. When it is the global village that waits for the growth that does not come, that continues the same tired policy rain-dances instead of adapting and seeking real solutions, there may not be enough left over, in the end, to rebuild—and if there is, it will be on unimaginable time-scales.
Why don't we learn? Traditional societies are constrained by the lessons of history. Periods of hardship or crisis will tend to reinforce traditional practices because custom and ritual are its lifeblood, the source of confidence and stability. Future based societies, on the other hand, are not constrained by historical lessons but have instead cultivated a self-image fundamentally beyond them. Conditions now are so different, so far advanced beyond anything that came before, history becomes something with little or nothing to teach us—it is, in a word, irrelevant. History is no more than a data mine to tease out the blueprint of our inexorable progress. Analyses that draw historical parallels, say to the Roman Empire or Easter Island, are at best mere rhetorical gimmicks. Perspectives that position contemporary society not as the soaring eagle it imagines itself to be but the cresting wave it is have no place in the future oriented society. One has better odds convincing preliterates to quit the rain dancing and devote whatever energy remains to relocating their village.
Serial failure and disaster are inevitable when the societal goals are pitched to the extremes of the past and the future, from conservative stasis to unceasing growth. Such projects, like the War on Terror, are definitional failures. And not only is the ultimate objective misconceived, existing conditions are qualified as unimportant and the sense of responsibility for them, which otherwise might mitigate ruin, is abdicated. If events develop essentially as part of an organic process, according to principles beyond our ken written into nature itself, the sense of agency evaporates. The best that can be done is precisely what must not be allowed to happen: preservation of the status quo.
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