Sublime Oblivion Forums

1. 

   T. Greer
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #
   

   In another thread, a commenter said something that I find find quite mysterious and worth discussing further.

   The words in question are these:

   Performance of the past is not necessarily a guideline to performance of the future.

   Upon reading this statement, my first reaction was simple: My dear man, the past is the only guideline to the future! If you abandon it, you abandon the only light humanity has!

   After mulling over the statement in question for a bit longer, I developed a more nuanced response to the idea contained therein. This topic is an attempt to express this response convincingly.

   In a sense, this is the wrong place to have this discussion. This is a forum for a book on future history -- a contradiction in terms if there ever was one. But it is a discussion I think we must have. Mainly, it is my belief that Western analysts are all too sure of their ability to read the contours of the future, to predict that which shall come to pass.

   I suspect that we do this for two reasons. The first is the Western conception of time and man's relation to it. The second is the more recent rise of the social sciences and the consequent marginalization of history. As I am (as always) pressed for time, I shall restrict my opening post to the first of these factors.

   When speaking of time in English, we conceptually place the future in front of us and the past behind. Take a few common, almost everyday, statements in the English language: "the future lays before us", "As time moves forward", "That is all behind us now", "You must leave the past behind", ect. This view of time as a linear process, with the past unseen, lost in mists of time behind our field of vision, and the future spread out, with all the potential possibilities within eyes reach, has had an interesting effect on the way in which we view events. It has provided us with the tools to spot out possibilities and opportunities; seeing the future as something we must move towards means that we will indeed move. This does not come without drawbacks, however. The Western mind is ill adapted to understanding, or even being interested in, the past. So too is it always focused with progress; the status quo is always something to be left behind. The final consequence of the Western conception of time is the most pertinent to this conversation - as we imagine the future before our eyes, we are always sure that we know what will come to pass.

   The Western view is not the only view; the Chinese express time in a downward motion, to provide an example. But the expression of time most useful for this conversation, I think is that found in Hawai'ian. The best explanation of this conception I could find online* was in this ACME publication (pp.85):

   the Hawaiian concept of ‘facing future’, a concept based within an epistemology born in the navigational exploits of the colonizers of the Pacific. The concepts of ‘past’ and ‘future’ are explained by Hawaiians using bodily directions, the front of the body faces the ‘past’ while the back faces ‘future’. Hawaiians ‘face’ their ‘future’ with their backs because the future is an unknown. On the other hand, ‘past’ is knowable; it can be ‘seen’ in front of each of us, shaping our character and consciousness. Hawaiians believe that knowing who they are, genealogically, and where they came from, geographically and metaphysically, makes them capable of making more informed decisions about the direction to move in the future.

   The usefulness of this approach is easy to see. The Hawaiians are right - the only thing we can see is the past. The past is laid out before us in perfect detail -- it is he future that lies in the vast unknown. Imagine looking at a landscape this way. Even a person well studied in geological and ecology would have a hard time predicting the contours of the land behind him by looking at the view in front of him. We are as the man looking at a landscape and trying to guess what is behind us.

   Writing a future history is a hapless task. However, if one is to engage in this task, then this realization must occur: the past is all we have. This is where the analogy breaks down. Our geologist can always turn around. We cannot. We can see far, up to the horizon of the past, but we cannot view a second of the future. If we decide to remove the past from our predictions, we are removing the only view we have.

   I don't fancy being the blind man trying to describe a landscape.

   *Note to self: go to library today and find a better source for this information.

2. 

   Anatoly Karlin
   Sublime Lord
   Posted 2 years ago #
   

   Some of my thoughts on your lovely discourse on time and history.

   1) I agree with you that the dominant Western conception of history is linear, having its origins in Christianity (Armageddon, the Last Judgment, etc) and reinforced after the industrial revolution. However, I'm not sure that it is valid to say that they discount history as a guide to possible futures. To the contrary, the West has what is almost undoubtedly the world's biggest, and certainly most analytical, historiographic heritage.

   2) You write:

   The final consequence of the Western conception of time is the most pertinent to this conversation - as we imagine the future before our eyes, we are always sure that we know what will come to pass.

   But does this not directly contradict your criticism of Martin, who was criticizing the whole idea of linear projection of current trends?

   Performance of the past is not necessarily a guideline to performance of the future.
   Upon reading this statement, my first reaction was simple: My dear man, the past is the only guideline to the future! If you abandon it, you abandon the only light humanity has!

   3) I've always been under the impression the traditional Chinese approach to history is cyclical (in their case, exemplified by their c.300-year dynastic cycles).

   The "downward" approach appears instead to refer to the Hindu and Greek conceptions of Ages of Man, in which civilization degenerated from a Golden Age of peace and abundance, to an Iron / lower metal Age of immorality, cities, and war. (Interesting observation - this corresponds to what happens in a Malthusian cycle).

   4) The Hawaiian metaphor of time and the uncertainty over the future is certainly poetic, though not original to them. E.g. see the theological speculations of the Gnostics and Kabbalah, eloquently expounded upon in the works of Borges (talking of whom, his conception of time as "forking paths" is another very good metaphor - impossible to predict beyond the first few turns). These arguments are aesthetic and persuasive.

   5) I fully agree that the future is in principle unknowable to humans and will always remain so. To calculate it, you will basically need to replicate the entire universe (/metaverse), and run it faster so as to peer into the future e.g. on a hypercomputer; but that is impossible, the very act of replication will merely paste an identical copy over our current universe. I wrote on these and similar things in What Might Be Is.

   6) Fortunately, to write future history you don't need anywhere near the above degree of precision, and for that simpler models and conceptions of how the world worked, and works, is a valid and useful tool. E.g., Wells managed to predict the missile-armed submarine in 1933. Furthermore, no penalties for getting it wrong - and if I get it right, we'll have much more to worry about than futurism.

3. 

   T. Greer
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #
   

   Facing Backwards to See the Future Part II: Civilizational Narratives and the Semantic Construction of Time

   Concerning the Chinese, Antoly is probably correct on the scale of civilization.* but I was referring to something quite different -- the Chinese semantic construction of time. The Chinese term for next week, "Xia ge xingqi" (下个星期), literally translates as "Down a week". Likewise, the Chinese term for last week, "Shang ge xingqi" (上个星期), can be literally rendered as "Up a week." The same goes for months, decades, and centuries. What went before is above the head; what is to come is below the feet.

   This placement of the future as physically beneath man cannot help but influence the psyche of those who use it -- such a man does not face the future. He falls through it.**

   I hope that I am delineating the difference between cultural expressions of time and narratives concerning it. Each civilization has a unique meta-narrative to explain the course of history (be they accurate reflections of reality or not). These are stories painted with broad strokes -- Antoly did a fine job summarizing many of them in the post preceding this. I shall leave this subject to him, however, as it only marginally related to the case I am trying to build. While understanding historical narratives is incredibly important for understanding a culture, this is not the intent of my post. I am (for the moment) much more interested in exploring different ways humans can approach the way we observe existence.

   This brings us back to Hawai'i. "Facing future" is an English articulation of the native Hawaiian semantic construction of time. It is not a thought out narrative, but a set of assumptions ingrained in Hawaiian language and culture. These assumptions, I posit, provide historians with the best way to understand the future.

   To change our ways we need to understand our current errs, and on that count I am afraid that I was less clear than I should have been. In particular I regret using the word "linear" in my explanation of the Western expression of time. "Linear" serves as a one word summary of the Western liberal's historical narrative. It does not, however, explain the Western expression of time. This expression of time is much older than European liberalism. Herodotus, a believer in 'Ages of Man' if there ever was one, would be perfectly comfortable talking of a future before and a past behind even while rejecting the ideal of linear progression. Our personal relationship with time supersedes any narrative we use to explain it. That Westerners have expressed time in a similar fashion for more than 2,000 years is a testament to this fact.

   As our way viewing time is embedded in our language, it is extremely difficult to imagine thinking about time in a different way.*** Attempting to see time through other perspectives can yeild rich rewards, however.

   Allow me to give an example - the example that prompted this conversation. Martin's original comment was as follows:

   Performance of the past is not necessarily a guideline to performance of the future.

   Martin's comment is not incorrect. Statements that use qualifiers such as "not necessarily" usually are. However, it does prompt a question: if the past does not necessarily serve as a guideline for the future, what does?

   The Westerner is able to answer with ease. Theories, projections, trends -- all are tools that illuminate the way before us. It is natural for the Westerner to think these things. The past is unseen, retained only in memory, but a part of a larger puzzle.

   The Hawaiian, in contrast, finds the entire question to be a puzzle. All of those tools the Westerners drag up to form their crystal ball are unknown. All that can be seen is the past - the future is a complete and utter shroud. It makes no sense to ask what else can serve as a guideline to understanding the future, as the past is the only guideline available to human kind.

   This does not mean that the Hawaiian view of the future is linear. I ask you to reconsider the metaphor of the geologist. If our geologist views at the landscape before him and then predicts how the landscape behind will appear, are his guesses "linear"? The term hardly makes sense within the context!

   Remember that linear refers to an equation. A linear system is one of dependent and independent variables - you tweak one side a bit and the other side pops out just like you expected it to.

   The problem is that landscapes don't work like this. It is near impossible to separate features of the land into such variables -- so to is it impossible for the historian to tease out the variable that determines the future. And if the past is -as the Hawaiians say- all we have, the historian is left with an inseparable mass of facts, figures, and factors that can be understood only as a working whole.

   The problem with such a system is that it is impossible to predict where it shall move in the future.

   My criticism of Martin then, lies not with his use of linear projections, but with his reliance on projections at all. Projections, by their nature, are linear things -- if we are to reject linear thinking, than we have to reject the idea of futuristics all together.

   NOTE: A clever reader will realize that I never explained why the Hawaiian expression of time is the one most deserving our use. That subject, as well as a more expansive argument for my rather audacious concluding paragraph, shall be included in the next segment of this series, "Facing Backwards to See the Future Part III: The Paleontologist's Dilemma, Interdependence, and the Tyranny of the Social Sciences. "

   *However, I will note that Confucius was just as obsessed with the golden age of the past as were the Greeks

   **I am not a master of Chinese, nor an expert on Chinese culture, but it appears to me that the connotation of words like "fall", "drop", and "tumble" is considerably more neutral than their corresponding words in English. The Chinese do not talk of the downfall of empires, but the disintegration of dynasties. The first sentence of China's first great piece of literature, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, reads: "The Empire, long divided, must unite: long united, must divide."

   The focus is never reaching the heights of greatness (a Western conception), but maintaining a holistic harmony. Naturally, the Chinese express failed fortunes and disaster not in terms of downward motion, but the cleaving asunder of what should be whole.

   ***George Orwell was one of the first folks to realize the constrains language places upon thought. For those unsure of this idea, I very much recommend reading his most famous book, 1984

4. 

   Gregor
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #
   

   I’m with Razhumikin on the study of history. Whether it is because I am a historian or a historian who lives in a nation where the ‘professional’ intelligentsia are pig ignorant about geography, history and logic, I do think that ‘predicting the future’ is mainly about guessing how over-promoted politicians of the future will mess up. Will they mess up because they didn’t know how others messed up, or will they mess up trying not to mess up as others have messed up or will they mess up because they think others have not messed up when in fact they have?

   Whilst Dostoyevsky has his detractors, I think that he was largely right in foreseeing historicism and its poverty.

   History, it seems to me is convoluted rather than linear, because people tend to sentimentalise the distant past whilst viewing the recent past as a dark age. Subsequently the Brits in charge now view post-war settlement Britain (1945-79) as an abysmal time, whilst those of my generation see much that is appealling about it.

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