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Misguided articles like this are the consequence of deifying “Progress.” Today is treated as necessarily better than yesterday. Whether this is actually histori

Misguided articles like this are the consequence of deifying “Progress.” Today is treated as necessarily better than yesterday. Whether this is actually historically true, or examining what “better” is supposed to mean, are never investigated. It’s especially ironic when modern people look at past eras and think, “How could they ever have thought they were justified in doing what they did? How could they have assumed they were superior and on the right side of history?” Well, people are doing the same thing today. So it’s not particularly surprising. This has its roots in Christianity and this is made clear when you compare Western linear concepts of time to say, Hindu cyclical ones. Which is, of course deeply ironic considering the ideologies involved here. It’s an odd sort of subconscious Christian ouroboros.

XorNot 6y ago
Excessive focus on the past as better then the present leads only to stagnation. You wind up with policy-making that is just a cargo-cult of what history books and half-remembered stories say, rather then dealing with reality.
- keiferski 6y ago
  Well, conservatism and progressivism are largely mirror images of each other. In the Western World, at least. Both came out of the French Revolution.
- MomoXenosaga 6y ago
  I find that people on the shall we say conservative side of the spectrum read different history books.
- sitkack 6y ago
  Is it overly focusing on the past or is it discounting the past because the present has to be better, while in reality we are making the same mistakes. The periodicity is there, but we ignore it because we assume we are necessarily improving regardless because of our falsely assumed temporal-progress trajectory. You see this in system design where someone makes something new, as a goal of improving an existing system, but really the only quality it has is that it is new. So they are also constructing a future shitty system at the same time. In many instances, one should ignore time and think about states. Or at least heavily discount it and don't let it distort your thinking.

XorNot 6y ago

Excessive focus on the past as better then the present leads only to stagnation. You wind up with policy-making that is just a cargo-cult of what history books and half-remembered stories say, rather then dealing with reality.

keiferski 6y ago
Well, conservatism and progressivism are largely mirror images of each other. In the Western World, at least. Both came out of the French Revolution.
MomoXenosaga 6y ago
I find that people on the shall we say conservative side of the spectrum read different history books.
sitkack 6y ago
Is it overly focusing on the past or is it discounting the past because the present has to be better, while in reality we are making the same mistakes. The periodicity is there, but we ignore it because we assume we are necessarily improving regardless because of our falsely assumed temporal-progress trajectory. You see this in system design where someone makes something new, as a goal of improving an existing system, but really the only quality it has is that it is new. So they are also constructing a future shitty system at the same time. In many instances, one should ignore time and think about states. Or at least heavily discount it and don't let it distort your thinking.