A Nostalgia of Youth and Past Alike
I can't help but think that the conception of the unintelligent being more content than others comes in part from an idea that children are the least educated, and at the same time the least burdened. As the years pile their knowledge upon us, the weight of it all begins to slowly crush many of our dreams, and with it usually, our gentle and childish spirit. Of course this analogy can only be taken so far because of the fact that someone out there has to take care of the child, and consequently, take responsibilty. We can't return to our childhood ways of thinking, not simply because we can't just forget or unlearn the things and push the difficult parts out, but also because we've taken on responsibilities that cannot be pushed back onto our parents or someone else. There is, however, another major defect to this way of thinking lying beneath it all: we often continue to look back at our childhoods with an idealized perfection that goes beyond a simple longing or nostalgia.
While we generally think of our youth as being the best part of our lives it isn't always simply because we were free of obligation and responsibilty. We have a habit of sanitizing our own pasts within our memories if for no other reason than to make the future bearable. Even thinking back a short period ago in one's life provides an interesting example. Thinking for only a moment where were you just six months or one year ago, generally a very clean, sterile version of events springs to mind. Often we remember the things that made us happy first, but once you really begin to question how you felt while you went about your everyday life, the full picture comes to focus. It's easier to remember the good times you had throughout the years, laughing with friends, rather than the times you spent crying alone in your own room.
How often do parents tell their children that things were so much better when they were young? That things have changed and it's mostly been for the worse, that even the things which make our lives easier have robbed us of the building of character which those difficulties provide. It's nothing new that members of the older generation will complain about how the young lack responsibility, motivation, and morality. About how they're just different, really.
In considering the generational divide, I've felt for some time that the young and old feel angry at the world for entirely different reasons. The young (especially teenagers) tend to be upset because they want the freedoms and other advantages of being treated as adults, but the world still sees them as children. They often rebel and as they age they change the world wanting to make it different than the one they feel held them down as they grew up. The old, on the other hand, tend to be upset because they view the world as having changed and that they are no longer the ones harnessing that change, it's all been taken from them, life's passing them by, and now it's all changing so fast they can't keep up. Sometimes I wonder if what the aged are really complaining about when they do it, is just being old themselves, and that what made things so much better in the past they remember, is that they were young when it happened.
The past was not sparkling and perfect in anyone's life, but we all look back on our own with nostalgia, even though there were of course problems we all had growing up, as well as struggles unique to each generation. When you apply this idea of sanitizing one's past, you begin to see examples of it extend even further to whole periods of time. The old sitcoms from the 50's present a very idealized version of the era they portray (the movie Pleasantville did an excellent job of demonstrating and deconstructing this point), and if you apply this concept even further, so too is many conservative americans' view of Victorian America, and many americans' view in general of the founding fathers and colonial era. In the U.S. we often have a habit of putting the ancient Greeks on a pedestal as if they were the forerunners of our democracy so to speak. The ancient Greeks themselves believed they had descended from an even greater culture that preceded their own, which in turn believed the same thing. In his book "The Third Chimpanzee", Jared Diamond dubbed this phenomenon quite appropriately as, "The Golden Age that never was".
Truth, Lies, Reality
I've understood for quite some time that the past was not the perfect, idyllic vision I once held of it, and yet the question which now confronts me is: Has any of this made me any happier? Doesn't life keep on kicking you when you're down anyways, and can you really blame a person for wanting to escape reality when everything is just so fucked up? The people who break the rules and cheat tend to get their way, the people who are honorable get screwed. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, those with the most will always be on top and never stop wanting more. I've sometimes wondered if perhaps all that's actually happened by realizing something like the concept behind our nostalgia of the past, is that I've robbed myself of what is a natural defense for us to duck into the bliss of ignorance. There are certain things we'd rather not know, aren't there also some things we're just better off not knowing?
When the truth feels unbearable, many of us resort to telling lies to spare others what we feel will just hurt or burden them. The so-called "white lies" we tell others, because we're trying to be merciful and not malicious. When everything is wrong with your life and you're sad and hurt beyond words, and then pass someone in the hall at work who asks you how you're doing and you simply reply, "Fine" you're already doing this starting to do this. When you believe another person's similar reply even though there is clearly something wrong, you're accepting the relief that comes without probing further. We all have our own problems we have to deal with in our own way, but some problems belong to us all and we simply believe things that cannot be true as means of escape.
The ignorant are not immune to misfortune, even children find themselves unhappy and reduced to tears, and even people who avoid the harsher truths of life have to deal with some sorts of hardship when it come right down to it. Accidents, injuries, sickness, taxes, arguments with other people, rotten luck, life. These things are everyone's problems and they happen to the ignorant as well as the wise, the ignorant just don't understand how and why and are left more confused than others. We can choose the comfort of believing lies or we can confront the pain of the awful truth. White lies may ease our discomfort for as long as we can believe them, but therein lies the risk not only of learning the painful truth, but also the added agony of discovering you've been lied to. Lies may indeed be necessary, but the advantages they hold are illusion, the advantages the truth holds are of reality.
What we are learning now
There is one final implication of knowledge I'd like to to address, an idea that has been lingering in my head for the past few days. It pertains to some of the possible dangers of knowledge. While the whole argument of "knowledge is power" and "power corrupts" could be easily linked and fuel much more discussion, I don't want to dwell too much on that for what I had in mind has also to do with what we are (and aren't) learning on the whole today.
The term "specialization", when used in an evolutionary sense, refers to certain species becoming so specifically adapted to one particular aspect of their environment that they often end up becoming dependent on it. Pandas and koalas, for example, have developed very specialized digestive systems for bamboo and eucalyptus respectively, and both species are now at a point where neither can live without their particular source of food. Specialization is generally viewed as a disadvantage in an evolutionary sense because in addition to the multitude of other things that can kill off a species (i.e. predators, natural disasters, etc...) a simple thing that merely threatens what they are dependent on (a famine or disease affecting bamboo or eucalyptus for the case of pandas and koalas) has the potential to devastate their population and the risk of extinction is therefore much higher. Humans, with our ability to eat many types of plants as well as meat and survive in hot as well as cold climates are considered to be very generalized (or unspecialized), and hold an advantage by being able to change food sources when one runs out or move to a new area if one becomes unstable.
I watched "Gorillas in the Mist" a short while ago, became interested in the basis of the events and poked around Wikipedia until I ended up reading about Louis Leakey, a famous archaeologist, and important figure in the field of human evolution. He helped set up and guide the initial placement of Dian Fossey, as well as Jane Goodall, into positions where they'd observe primates in a natural setting. One quote of his that I read, in particular, has stuck with me for the past few days:
"We know from the study of evolution that, again and again, various branches of animal stock have become over-specialized, and that over-specialization has led to their extinction. Present-day Homo sapiens is in many physical respects still very unspecialized− ... But in one thing man, as we know him today, is over-specialized. His brain power is very over-specialized compared to the rest of his physical make-up, and it may well be that this over-specialization will lead, just as surely, to his extinction. ... if we are to control our future, we must first understand the past better."-From L.S.B. Leakey, Adam's Ancestors, Fourth Edition, final page.
I've been thinking to myself recently of just what could possibly cause humankind's noticeably high brain power to be any kind of a detriment, let alone one which could lead to his downfall. It's hard to believe it could have any negative potential when considering all the accomplishments we now enjoy that are based upon it, things such as technology, logic, increased food production, science, transportation, communication, etc...
When I look to the future, it's difficult not to be excited by the seemingly limitless potential of humankind. Maybe I'm just getting older, but recently I've also been left with a sense of unease at times at just how uncertain it all is. I heard recently that the most in-demand jobs of today, didn't even exist 10 years ago, and that most of the students of today are basically going to school to prepare for jobs that don't yet exist, to fix problems we don't even know about yet.
Given our propensity to kill one another, it could be said that knowledge has indeed become a very dangerous thing. We are now far more efficient at doing so than ever before, nuclear weapons alone could destroy the planet many times over. It's no exaggeration to say that society stands balanced on a razor's edge and could tip over at any time. Robert E. Howard once observed coldly through one of his characters that: "Barbarism is the natural state of mankind, Civilization is unnatural, a whim of circumstances." It's difficult not to be pessimistic when littered throughout history are examples of mankind's savage nature to kill others. Society as we know it could fall. We could turn on one another, or we could create the means for our destruction by tampering too much with mother nature. In either event, many of us could die very suddenly.
But what of the aftermath should the apocalypse ever come? The skills it would take to survive (hunting, farming, other ways of acquiring food and building shelter), aren't too widespread within the common people of today, and such an event would certainly take most of us completely by surprise. In today's society nearly all centers around the sea of information. Those who can navigate it successfully thrive, those who can swim it survive, those who cannot sink to the bottom. The fact that we now all seem to be learning things for jobs and problems which might not even yet exist might just be another way of saying we lack the skills to survive in the following turmoil of a cataclysm. I'm not saying that our priorities aren't straight, but our knowledge could very well prove to not only be the proximate source of our own extermination, but the final nail in the coffin in the form of our own unpreparedness.
The stance of the cautious optimist really seems best. We cannot negatively dwell only on the harsher aspects of the past and hope to still remain optimistic and boldly move into the future. To do so is to remain in darkness. But the mixed consequences of knowledge should not be underestimated as well. Knowledge does have the capability to do us harm as well as enlighten and improve. It strikes me that in many ways, we do fear certain types of knowledge; we fear to know more about the things and people we find despicable, even though such things can sometimes be helpful. It makes sense to some degree, why would any decent person want to understand the mind of a psychopath unless we wanted to try and stop them? By learning of things we hate or fear we become afraid that we'll grow to be more like that which we study. It amazes and frightens us that while in the beginning we can't help but turn away, after a while we can't stop looking.
"I was just guessin’, At numbers and figures, Pullin’ the puzzles apart- Coldplay, The Scientist
Questions of science, Science and progress, Do not speak as loud as my heart"
"Write page after page of analysis- Keane, Perfect Symmetry
Looking for the final score
We're no closer than we were before"
Looking at the way our artists view things I sometimes wonder if they represent the caution and skepticism present in us all everytime a new discovery is made. Sometimes I feel like the words of our poets and singers simply tear away at those of our great thinkers and inventors. As if to say the mind of humankind will never be a match for our hearts, that despite all our realizations we can't conquer misery or hardship, that for all of our knowledge it in the end brings us no happiness.
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