I do think the present is more interesting than the future, at least to me; I also think the present is weirdly under-described, at least with any accuracy. We've all gotten so conceptual that description has suffered in the most general sense. I'd sooner expect a person-on-the-street to have a worked-out "ideology" than to be able to relate the contents, nature, feel of a single room in their house! This is to say nothing of our near-universal poverty of language for plants, types of architectural element, types of face and body, clothes, etc.
I'll only add: I also think the past is often more interesting than the present. I was reading Chesterton ably roasting intellectuals for often saying that on the one hand, "no group has any claim to truth over any other group" (or tradition, or civilization), while on the other hand asserting that one group certainly does enjoy supremacy: the present. So while they might say it's absurd to privilege the values of one society over another, they're united on feeling that the society of the past is without any epistemological standing at all: fools who just "didn't know what we know."
The avenue into the past for me is usually individual authors, from whose lives and works I regularly learn that almost everything I "know" about the past is as false and empty and reductive and motivated as everyone we "know" about the present.
And man: I feel you on the same of prior posts; I cannot believe the shit I let fly with. I console myself that the Internet forgets everything even as it records it, and no one can post without showing their ass; but man: it's not easy lol!!!
So true. And often the descriptions of the present are usually coated with predictions of the future “I can’t believe Trump did X, it means that Y will happen!”
That does seem like a unique quality of olds, huh? Youth is about looking forward, old age is about looking backwards. If that is true, would you say it’s immature and unwise to look forward?
Maybe, but honestly I think there are seasons for everything. It’s not something I find interesting or productive, the orientation of youth, but it takes all kinds and I wouldn’t disdain anyone who disagrees. But man: the future seems real dull, as a subject, to me, other than the futures of people I know and care about, or near term shit in the arts, or weather lmfao!
I do think the present is more interesting than the future, at least to me; I also think the present is weirdly under-described, at least with any accuracy. We've all gotten so conceptual that description has suffered in the most general sense. I'd sooner expect a person-on-the-street to have a worked-out "ideology" than to be able to relate the contents, nature, feel of a single room in their house! This is to say nothing of our near-universal poverty of language for plants, types of architectural element, types of face and body, clothes, etc.
I'll only add: I also think the past is often more interesting than the present. I was reading Chesterton ably roasting intellectuals for often saying that on the one hand, "no group has any claim to truth over any other group" (or tradition, or civilization), while on the other hand asserting that one group certainly does enjoy supremacy: the present. So while they might say it's absurd to privilege the values of one society over another, they're united on feeling that the society of the past is without any epistemological standing at all: fools who just "didn't know what we know."
The avenue into the past for me is usually individual authors, from whose lives and works I regularly learn that almost everything I "know" about the past is as false and empty and reductive and motivated as everyone we "know" about the present.
And man: I feel you on the same of prior posts; I cannot believe the shit I let fly with. I console myself that the Internet forgets everything even as it records it, and no one can post without showing their ass; but man: it's not easy lol!!!
So true. And often the descriptions of the present are usually coated with predictions of the future “I can’t believe Trump did X, it means that Y will happen!”
i’m escaping as far back in time as I can, as have generations of olds before me!!!!
That does seem like a unique quality of olds, huh? Youth is about looking forward, old age is about looking backwards. If that is true, would you say it’s immature and unwise to look forward?
Maybe, but honestly I think there are seasons for everything. It’s not something I find interesting or productive, the orientation of youth, but it takes all kinds and I wouldn’t disdain anyone who disagrees. But man: the future seems real dull, as a subject, to me, other than the futures of people I know and care about, or near term shit in the arts, or weather lmfao!