The History of the Future

In the history of the future,
Will it be discovery or invention?
In the story of the past,
Was it all discovery or invention?
In the moment of the present,
Does it really matter where we came from,
Compared to where we're going?

Reviews

[Chris Shaw]

Your poems always make my brain rattle.Regarding the history of the past, it matters little because we can do nothing about it. It has gone. We can learn from it, but we can't change what has already happened. As for the future, it has no history yet, or otherwise it would be in the past, in which case we would still not be able to change it.The present is far more important, we live in the present, we should savour the present. I guess I don't spend too much time pondering on where I came from and as to where we are going, I switch off completely. That is a scary place.That is enough rattling of my brain this morning David. Greetings to you from across the pond.

Chris

[Davidgeo]

Why thank you Chris, I'll take the brain rattling thing as a compliment. Not everyone finds these kinds of poems to be a very complimentary experience.

The real key to this poem is this basic question... "is it discovery or invention"? Does everything already exist and we're just figuring it out step by step in a seemingly endless process? Or did nothing exist and something at some point invent "it"? Of course at this time in reality it's somewhere in between, we invent somethings and discover others but if you wind the "clock" back to the first moment the very first hydrogen atom showed up in the universe... did it invent itself, discover itself, or get invented or discovered by something or someone else, in which case it just restarts the whole problem to the beginning without an absolute solution. Some people use religion to end the debate, some just choose not to think about it at all, some are even luckier and lack the mental disposition altogether... but the best approach is to simply keep an open mind and commit yourself to that instead of being "right". It's one of the easiest ways to eliminate bias, accepting and sometimes even expecting to be at least partially wrong. Clinging to internalized bias and subjective truth is what keeps people prisoners of the moment and prevents either discovery or invention.

And of course the future has a history... just think about the process it took for you from the time you woke up to where you are in this very moment and then what you are going to do in the next 60 seconds. That's a part of the history of a future.

[Lyanth]

I am of the opinion that history is more or less our future, which makes it extremely relevant. See, history has a pattern, there is nothing new under the sun. If that is so, our future is to replay the past in our very own version.
For example, at one point in history, Egypt was the epitome of power, the nation of nations above most others, it fell, then came others that rose, advanced, gained power, then fell, like Rome...Now the U.S.
May be a matter of political views or maybe just world views in general, maybe I'm just a cynic.
However we are at our "Height". I see us slowly starting to crumble and fall apart.
We claim to want no war, but we are at war with ourselves and each other already, down to the war of genders at this point.
We follow in the footpath of many before us, our future, if not readjusted may be just like that of nations come and gone thousands of years ago. Nothing is exactly the same, but nothing is original.
At least in my perception.
I've both seen and heard multiple times from different sources and professionals that older civilizations were heavily more advanced than we thought.
Most of the remains we see today prove that. Different does not mean barbaric, perhaps we did not come from just cavemen or people who lived aimless lives in carved out mudballs and knew nothing of technology.
Think of Africa, what comes to mind? Dirt floors, stick huts, dust, starvation, perhaps even savagery? Many people see this. In reality a good portion of Africa has access to food, water, cars, vehicles, houses, music etc. They live similar to the ways we do.
Much in the same way, when we picture past civilizations, many picture uncivilized, primordial people who were simplistic.
In some ways they were, but they were also moving and lifting gigantic stones, cutting shapes into slabs with precision that astounds even us and creating things that lasted centuries after they died out.
We, in all our advancement still can't figure out how they did many things.
Begs the question, what will we leave behind as a relic of the past..

So as to the question, I'd say rediscovery..
Wish you a bitterly better morning than I am having, nice write.
Great subject for debate.

[Davidgeo]

Do you think it's possible to ever know if you are or are not living in the middle of the "good old days"?

I think the real advancements are always in method and understanding before scale and beauty. We are far more advanced than any civilization that we know of. I don't think we are any more or less intelligent though.

In movies like "2001" and "Interstellar" and the like one of the major plot points is that consciousness itself is a relic leftover from countless amounts of time ago that was designed to find itself eventually even if it somehow destroyed itself or was destroyed some other way. In a sense time itself is even a relic of itself.... "like a clock without a craftsmen...." alan moore

[Lyanth]

See that depends, no one looks back on the great depression as "The good old days." However, our great depression was someone else's Renaissance. So, it is subjective I suppose.
I think to a degree we are both smarter and dumber in different aspects of understanding.

[Davidgeo]

We're getting better at abstract concepts. Especially math and engineering. There are credible theories out there that says it's changing how our brains are forming/evolving. Our frontal cortex is getting bigger and that just happens to be where complex concious abstract thought happens to take place. If you go back in the fossil record and compare skull casings of pre homosapien species there is an obvious trend toward getting larger as time progresses. But size isn't everything, certain neanderthal species had larger brains than homosapiens but probably not larger frontal cortex's. They probably had a larger brain for things like processing vision, scent, sound and movement at a higher level than our direct ancestors did.... but, they weren't as clever and couldn't acheive the same level of problem solving skill that we could. But, this place is really old and it's possible that civilizations similar to or exceding our own have already risen and completely fallen of the fossil record multiple times over the billions of years. There are huge gaps of time we can't speak with any intelligence on at all....

[Lyanth]

Hm, I can agree with your last statement. Can't speak to the rest though. Perhaps we are developing different parts of our brains more than other, but perhaps this is because of how we live now. We are more sheltered, less capable in a lot of ways. We can afford to do more abstract thinking and processing.

[Davidgeo]

I used to be in the military from 2004-2009. There are more people incapable in a lot of ways in the civilian world but there are hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of us who are more capable in just about every meaningful way than our ancestors. And living a hard life like that doesn't leave more free time for abstract thinking and problem solving - it absolutely demands it or people die. The percentage of the population capable of those kinds of tasks under stressful conditions has declined substantially but the actual amount in numbers alive today is many, many times the entire world population up until the most recent population explosion.

[Davidgeo]

(military work under combat conditions demands problem solving and abstract thinking or people die is what I was trying to get across if I didn't make that clear... I posted that kind of hastily)

[Lyanth]

Ah, yes I see what you're saying. No then I think we were thinking of two different versions of abstract thinking.
My misunderstanding, what you've stated is true. I have had family in the military and some just in law enforcement. They do make you think and the experience does teach you a lot.
Yes, there are many capable people, especially in the forces. However, I think arguably, the military is nowhere near the size of the civilian population.
If the economy collapsed tomorrow, or an emergency struck, how many of us do you think would be able to survive without electricity, stores, markets, businesses and hospitals at our disposal?
If we were suddenly thrust into a time, say where people had to fend for themselves, what would happen?
I'm sure we'd survive, it's what we do, but we'd be very unprepared and many would die. We have become more reliant than self-sufficient.
In my point of view anyway, I could be wrong.

[Davidgeo]

I might get myself in trouble for saying this but... if all the power went out tomorrow it would be a net benefit for overall society after a few years.

When taken to the extreme you get one of those Avenger's movies, the one where the purple dude randomly kills 50% of all life in the galaxy to make life more blissful for the remaining 50%. I don't watch those movies enough to tell you too much more than that. But that's the extreme version, a more reasonable version is actually the plot to a real life version of that movie called "evolution".

[Lyanth]

Yes I'm familiar with it. To be honest, I quite dislike residing within the society of this day in age. I find it to be more of a burden than a benefit. Not saying there aren't benefits, but If I was able I'd remove myself.
That is the plan, however the thought of me secluding myself to live in peace seems to unsettle many so I'm not quite sure if they will make it easy.. I wouldn't wish for the apocalypse, but I won't pray against it.

[Davidgeo]

They might think your the new unibomber or something. But you get to choose who's opinion really matters or not so I wouldn't worry about it too much until you really have to.

[Lyanth]

I can choose what matters to me, bot not always what affects me or how.
Not sure who the unibomber is, I'll have to look into that reference and decide whether I should laugh or not..

[Davidgeo]

I just read this reply... how do you not know who the Unabomber is? Ted Kaczynski?

[Lyanth]

Ah, afraid not.. May have heard of it, but if so I've forgotten.

[Davidgeo]

It might be that he was born near me and was kind of a rock star in my field of study before he went batshit crazy that I know him so well and expect others to as well. But even still, it's good to know who Ted Kaczynski is. I don't actually think he was crazy... just, not a good person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski

[Lyanth]

Hm, so in short terms he was a recluse robbed of his solitude and sought to enact revenge on technology.

[Davidgeo]

That was probably what instigated his disposition. What drove him was far more complex than that though. He's probably the only psychopath I would recommend reading... but, his "manifesto" is actually quite compelling and rational. Until you get to his conclusions. What he thought society needed to become if it were to survive the very, very long term is pure "harmonic" chaos.

[Lyanth]

Can't seem to find that manifesto, maybe I'm looking on the wrong sites. Honestly feels like we're already on our way to chaos.

[Davidgeo]

Always remember while you're reading this that it is coming from the mind of a very disturbed human being that cannot perceive a lot of human emotion on any level. It's easy to forget because of how intelligent and well written he is.... anyway, here's a link to a pdf of it in full - http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf

[Lyanth]

Noted, I will keep that in mind.

[Lyanth]

Some people are more knowledgeable then they are wise. I think...he is, like many "psychotics" both highly perceptive and intelligent, but very unwise in his approach to the issue at hand.
Maybe not all of his ideas are correct, however I can wholly agree with multiple. Then again, I have been diagnosed with several mental disorders so my judgement may not be the same as most. To me it makes sense, his approach was stupid, but his concerns were not.

[Davidgeo]

I don't think he's your run of the mill 'psychopath', if there is such a thing. He's much more cerebral and rational... but still batshit crazy. He's a strange kind of walking paradox.

There's an 8 episode miniseries on netflix called "manhunter" that sheds a lot of light on who he was, how they caught him, why it was so hard to do, and why it took so long. It's pretty entertaining.

[Lyanth]

Maybe I'll check it out. I've met quite a few people labeled "Psychopaths" Usually they aren't run of the mill.
Crazy has many levels I suppose.