I have written before about the false comfort we get by looking to the past for answers that supposedly trump new information we find and confirm. (This is perhaps the most core attitude contained within the beliefs of some religious groups and philosophical outlooks.) But I have experienced a new take on that issue in a more day-to-day practical sense and it has to do with clutter that comes from keeping old items "just in case."
This is almost purely anecdotal, but I am someone who tends to toss things out as I go along. This goes for things that include emails, snail mail, old tax forms, gadgets of all kinds, clothes, and, in general, things I haven't used in a year or so. I have no qualms about giving them away or tossing them out. For me, hanging on to stuff from the past tends to inhibit my ability to look to the future where better information and improved stuff resides. Keeping the past around is an unnecessary burden and a distraction.
For others, however, there is an opposite tendency along a spectrum of possibilities where just about everything old has not only some kind of value but very important value that has, by default, more going for it than anything new. To toss out something old is to destroy solutions to humanity's greatest problems that, for some reason, originally failed, or is evidence of something profound. (To be clear, I'm not including things being held for purposes of sentimentality or pure nostalgia.)
Why this behavior comes across as intriguing to me is that the old stuff being saved rarely, if ever, gets used or is even accessed again. If it does, it's usually given an overabundance of present value, tapping into the desire we seem to have for ancient hidden treasures to give us answers instead of looking for them with the best tools we've since created. But, in reality, these things are not even close to being qualified to provide them. While the past certainly has value in understanding the human journey, this unfortunate desire to look backwards to find answers ignores all the evidence that shows the the best information--and tools to find more--is always ahead of us.
So, I guess the point is that I think this tendency to give undo power and overrated value to the past affects our behavior in ways that don't seem related. These include the keeping of folders of credit card bills from 30 years ago and old gas can caps "just in case," to religious texts of ancient societies containing their guesses about our place in the universe.
I'm not sure why this is the case (if it is), but I suspect there is more than one thing going on. The possibilities likely include a need to know something concrete about our "source" (on a personal level and in a larger sense), not wanting to insult ourselves by admitting the human journey has been filled with mistakes, and searching for evidence of universal meaning that, if true, must have always been there.
These are nice ideas at some level, but they misdirect us on our journey. What's most important is our future, not our past.
This is almost purely anecdotal, but I am someone who tends to toss things out as I go along. This goes for things that include emails, snail mail, old tax forms, gadgets of all kinds, clothes, and, in general, things I haven't used in a year or so. I have no qualms about giving them away or tossing them out. For me, hanging on to stuff from the past tends to inhibit my ability to look to the future where better information and improved stuff resides. Keeping the past around is an unnecessary burden and a distraction.
For others, however, there is an opposite tendency along a spectrum of possibilities where just about everything old has not only some kind of value but very important value that has, by default, more going for it than anything new. To toss out something old is to destroy solutions to humanity's greatest problems that, for some reason, originally failed, or is evidence of something profound. (To be clear, I'm not including things being held for purposes of sentimentality or pure nostalgia.)
Why this behavior comes across as intriguing to me is that the old stuff being saved rarely, if ever, gets used or is even accessed again. If it does, it's usually given an overabundance of present value, tapping into the desire we seem to have for ancient hidden treasures to give us answers instead of looking for them with the best tools we've since created. But, in reality, these things are not even close to being qualified to provide them. While the past certainly has value in understanding the human journey, this unfortunate desire to look backwards to find answers ignores all the evidence that shows the the best information--and tools to find more--is always ahead of us.
So, I guess the point is that I think this tendency to give undo power and overrated value to the past affects our behavior in ways that don't seem related. These include the keeping of folders of credit card bills from 30 years ago and old gas can caps "just in case," to religious texts of ancient societies containing their guesses about our place in the universe.
I'm not sure why this is the case (if it is), but I suspect there is more than one thing going on. The possibilities likely include a need to know something concrete about our "source" (on a personal level and in a larger sense), not wanting to insult ourselves by admitting the human journey has been filled with mistakes, and searching for evidence of universal meaning that, if true, must have always been there.
These are nice ideas at some level, but they misdirect us on our journey. What's most important is our future, not our past.
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