The past guides us; the future needs us.
December 23, 2013 10:49 AM   Subscribe

Whenever I look around me, I wonder what old things are about to bear fruit, what seemingly solid institutions might soon rupture, and what seeds we might now be planting whose harvest will come at some unpredictable moment in the future. The most magnificent person I met in 2013 quoted a line from Michel Foucault to me: "People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does." Someone saves a life or educates a person or tells her a story that upends everything she assumed. The transformation may be subtle or crucial or world changing, next year or in 100 years, or maybe in a millennium. You can’t always trace it but everything, everyone has a genealogy. Rebecca Solnit in TomDispatch: The Arc of Justice and the Long Run: Hope, History, and Unpredictability posted by davidjmcgee (8 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
That Foucault quote captures what my "pick one superpower" would be: The ability to see all the results and consequences of my actions. Time freezes for an instant at any inflection point and the future would unfold in my imagination with the multifaceted and every expanding ripples of the impact of a single decision.
posted by achrise at 12:13 PM on December 23, 2013 [4 favorites]


What a wonderful grand set of ideas! I love circular logic. TS Eliot said,
"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present."

Anyway, the silken windings of time fascinate me, and also the savants who by virtue of their vibrant nature still affect all of us across eons. Nicely written piece.
posted by Oyéah at 12:37 PM on December 23, 2013 [1 favorite]


achrise, that sounds more like a horrible ancient curse than a superpower.
posted by echo target at 12:53 PM on December 23, 2013 [3 favorites]


I thought what achrise described sounded more like being a Timelord.

Anyway, I really liked this article, and found the parts about hip hop to be especially great. I usually end up feeling incoherent and inarticulate when I try to describe why I think hip hop is deeply, deeply important, for all that I don't always like it, and Solnit completely nails why in this article.
posted by yasaman at 1:30 PM on December 23, 2013 [1 favorite]


More like being an Observer. I always got the sense Time Lords have a bit more mystical, indeterministic view of cause and effect (with many allowances for timey-wimey effects and such).
posted by saulgoodman at 2:29 PM on December 23, 2013


achrise, there's a 50's-early 60's sf story which imagines that exact ability, rather than telekinesis or something externally dramatic, being "the next step" in human evolution.
posted by clockzero at 3:05 PM on December 23, 2013


I enjoyed this post, thank you.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:17 PM on December 23, 2013 [1 favorite]


I, too, would like to be the Kwisatz Haderach.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:59 AM on December 24, 2013 [2 favorites]


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