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Kaleidospace

David Brin -- Science Fiction Writer

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The New Meme

PART THREE: The View of a Golden Age

FOR six thousand, ten thousand, fifty thousand years

-- however far back you assume we were intelligent and able to ask questions -- our ancestors had very little idea how the world worked. And we can safely assume that they were terrified most of the time.

Throughout those millennia, nearly every civilization we know of had a belief system based upon what might be called a Look Backward world view. In other words, people shared a common belief that their tribe, people, nation once had a golden age, a better time when jumans were more virtuous, stronger, closer to heaven. An era when sages worked wonders and were wiser than more recent folk. From Sumeria to China, to the legends of Native Americans, this thread of lost glory runs through almost every mythic tradition.

Except ours. Our worldwide, cosmopolitan, modern culture is arguably the first to take a radically divergent orientation, not necessarily better, but profoundly different. A philosophy that might be called Look Forward.

There was no golden age in the past, this revolutionary view declares; our ancestors scratched and clawed, and a few of them—the well-meaning ones—tried hard to redress the shabby ignorance they had inherited. Some, in sincerely trying to improve things, came up with dreadful world models, pantheons or social orders which excused, even encouraged, terrible persecutions or injustices. Still, despite all the mistakes and obstacles they faced, men and women managed glacially, generation by generation, to add to our knowledge—and to our wisdom, as well.

There was no past ancient golden age, say believers in the Look Forward vision. But there is a notion going around that we just might be able to build one, for tomorrow's children.

This new orientation toward the future, not the past, is especially clear in the scientific attitude toward knowledge. Instead of "Truth" with a capital T, immutable and handed down unchanged through time from some ancient text of lore, today we have the cycle of improvement and revision I described a little while ago. The best world models are found in the latest journal articles, in the most recent textbooks on any given subject—and even they won't be the final word, because in five or ten years there'll be better models still, as results pour in from new experiments.

To you, a modern reader and member of contemporary civilization, this way of looking at truth may sound obvious. (Note how even the phrases, "Look Backward" and "Look Forward," sound biased in favor of the latter, a result of prejudice built into our language.) But I cannot overstate how recently this point of view achieved anything approaching widespread acceptance. This shift in the time orientation of wisdom is an intellectual sea change unprecedented in the annals of human thought. Its consequences, which already include science and democracy, will grow more profound as the years go by.

The Kaleidospace logo and "Kaleidospace" are trademarks of Kaleidospace. The Kaleidospace logo is used with permission of artist [(c) 1994 MaryLou Novak]. Kaleidospace / Jeannie Novak / jeannie@kspace.com / Pete Markiewicz / pete@kspace.com_____________________________________