Something Thoughtful

 Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.  

                                       THE PAST DOES NOT EXIST

Recently, I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing (for the NZ Listener) Roger Horrocks’ capacious and informative book Culture in a Small Country. I will not repeat the things I wrote in the review, save to say that it is a detailed account of the arts in New Zealand over the last fifty years or so.

But there was one concept articulated by Horrocks that really struck me. In his second-to-last chapter, Horrocks considered what he called “the digital age” – that is, the age when younger people get their news and information off the internet rather that from newspapers, magazines, radio or television; the age in which younger people are more likely to be listening to music in podcasts rather than buying physical things like CDs (let alone ancient and defunct things like records); the age in which books are read on-line rather than as physical books; the age in which instant communication is taken as the norm and brevity is valued rather than depth. Horrocks notes that these things are characteristic of people under the age of 40 and he quotes a pundit’s term “digital natives” to describe them. They have grown up knowing nothing but the “digital age”. Many older people have, at least in part, accommodated themselves to this new digital world (like you who are reading this blog) – but they are likely to still have one foot in the pre-digital age, reading physical books, listening to music on the radio or on CDs (or records if they have any), subscribing to newspapers and magazines etc. Such people are designated “digital refugees”.

But along with this “digital age” comes much presentism (not a term that Horrocks uses) – that is, the idea that the present age is all that matters and the past is completely irrelevant. Says Horrocks “Through the internet we have had the potential to access more of the arts than our parents’ generation, yet we can also be grateful for our pre-digital education which exposed us to ‘the Great Tradition’, the pre-20^th century art and literature which schools now tend to skim over.” (p.339 – emphasis added). Later he adds “Young people are quick to assume that what is on line represents the sum total of knowledge. The internet acronym ETEWAF (or ‘Everything that ever was, available forever’) sums up this misconception.” (p.346) If it's not on the internet, it doesn’t exist.

And this assumption easily feeds the idea that the present age, and only the present age, is of any importance. The past is irrelevant. (And here I am expressing my own ideas which are not necessarily those of Horrocks.) Therefore we have nothing to learn from the past. This mindset is very closely related to the idea that the classics of art, music and literature were all devised by “dead white males”. Therefore there’s apparently no point in studying Aristotle or Dante or Shakespeare or Tolstoy et al. To do so is “elitist”. Besides, literature and art from previous centuries often express ideas and concepts that do not square with current values – therefore such works should be banned or at least denigrated. So you discovered that David Hume once had shares in a venture involving slavery? Quickly, expunge his name from the college he made famous. Don’t bother reading Chaucer or Marlowe – they both wrote stories vilifying Jews and therefore there’s nothing more to be said about them. Mark Twain called a character in Huckleberry Finn called Nigger Jim – away with him!

Underlying these attitudes is the assumption that current values are the only possible values. Without real knowledge of the past, there is no understanding that values do change and evolve; and a good part of what was written in previous eras still articulates essential truths. And there is little awareness that current values are not permanent and will themselves one day be looked upon as limited or foolish or worse.

I am not saying that all this happens inevitably if people take to scanning the internet rather than picking up a book. There are many internet-following young people of the “digital age” who also read real books, write intelligently, listen to older forms of music and at least respect elements of the past. But lack of real knowledge about the past, and scorn for most of what was created before the year 2000, are still real scourges of this time.