Idealizing Past, Present and Future
(1) The first group idealize and long for a return to the past, while complaining about how awful the present is: “You know this wouldn’t have happened fifty years ago!”
(2) The second group idealizes the past and demonizes the present: “The world has gone down the drain, if there were more people like me this wouldn’t have happened”. Oh yeah, this group always take themselves to be the exception; savior’s in their own minds. The ‘out-of-the-box’ thinkers.
(3) The third group idealize the future as an escape from both the past and the present. Progress will be the savior of all.
I’m curious what precipitated these thoughts.
“Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’ For it is not wise to ask such questions.” Ecclesiastes 7:10 (NIV)
(My sig at the forums)
I hadn’t even noticed! To answer your question, I was ‘inspired’ by a blurb from the book ‘Idiot America (How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free)’. A book which from the blurb seems to be saying, “Look, America is full of idiots, see what this 18th century…” Yeah, America has gotten pretty absurd, but so was the 18th century. I’m not saying the author of the book idealizes the past, and I think there are a few things in the past we could learn from. But, that’s where it came from.