In 1970, Joan Didion traveled around the gulf south and then around California.
The purpose of her trip was to understand California, America’s economic frontier, by understanding the Gulf South — a region that by 1970 was in steep decline, but that had, like California, also served at one point as an economic and physical frontier, attracting people from all over the world to the port cities of New Orleans, Mobile, Galveston and Tampa.
As her trip plays out, she forms an important observation about the two coastal regions. Though both possess geographies that have served to produce nation-sized economies, there are essential differences in the cultures and mythologies of each region that stem from the relationship each has with the past.
In the gulf south of 1970, the past is the foundational context that determines the future. In the California of 1970, the past exists only in the form of “decorative touches.”
The governor of experience
Implied in Didion’s observation is the suggestion that the relationship an individual has with the past may be the root of perception, and therefore the governor of experience.
Take, for example, the 3 archetypes below — the role the past forms and occupies within an individual’s psychology (or the collective’s) has interesting implications on the future.
// For many historians, history is cyclical, and perception often forks toward either A) the past as a repository of wisdom for driving progress, or B) the past as the deep reservoir of experience from which we learn nothing. For the optimists, we are learning from the cyclicality and progressing as a species on a long, positive arc. For the pessimists, we are succumbing to Hegel’s lament that “all we’ve learned from the past is that we learn nothing from the past.”
// For certain types of entrepreneurs, history is linear, and so the past is either unimportant to the future, or the enemy of the future. For example, an entrepreneur building a company in low bureaucracy growth sectors typically requires a less sophisticated understanding of the past than an entrepreneur building in a deeply bureaucratic sector like healthcare. Again a fork in perception: A) the past as irrelevant or inconsequential; or B) the past as the enemy that must be kept close and deeply understood, so as to eventually eliminate.
// For technicians & pragmatists, the future is assembled from the components of the past. It is iteration and incrementalism, using tools & ideas from the past to build the tools & ideas of tomorrow. The past is neither the antagonist of the future, nor the determinist; it is simply a corpus of artifacts & ancestors that we have the great privilege to leverage in infinite variety. The unifying theme is that Xfuture is generally the sum of tinkering, and occasionally, true system shock (e.g. WWII, COVID, etc).
In Sum
When the past deeply imbues a person’s perception of the future, then the future is a canvas painted already by a set of probabilistic expectations.
When the past is merely a decorative touch, then the future is a blanker canvas with fewer expectations and less consideration of probability.
A related digression & youtube discovery
Limited by the Unnoticed is an ongoing exploration of human beings, our past, and our ambitions, explored most often through the lenses of technology & history.
As I’ve written more, I’ve started to notice that a consistent theme (1, 2, and 3) on this blog is the idea that our capacity for mythology is the central reason for our greatest achievements, as well as our worst disasters.
I recently came across a youtube channel that speaks to this thematic with a really terrific combination of deep, interdisciplinary synthesis, as well as a healthy dose of British sarcasm & gallows humor. In this video, We’re the Last Humans Left, Harari’s Sapiens meets youtube pretty perfectly.