John Green tells us that "Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia" and I thoroughly believe that, in some ways, that's true.
We talk about our future, our deaths, what happens after we die with a sense of recollection. It's odd but I think we perhaps do it because it's the only way we know how; we only know how to remember. Our only experiences of death are those whereby we have experienced someone dying or have read/watched someone either dying or experienced someone else dying. In a weird way, we are recollecting.
Similarly, we can only imagine was our future will be like by the experiences we've already had. Take, for example, university. My experience of university is purely through open days, hearing other people's experiences and visiting my friend - my idea of what it will be like is formed purely by experiences.
I can sit here and imagine who I'm going to marry, or what I'm going to do as a job, or many other things - but that is limited by my prior knowledge of people, marriage, jobs, what I enjoy etc. Our past, in a way, limits our musings of our future.
We can only imagine a future based on existing ideas. It's like trying to create Pratchett's 'octarine' - you cannot imagine it, and Pratchett makes this clear by the fact that "Rincewind always thought it looked sort of greenish-purple." All of our imaginings are based purely on our experiences and that is why "imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia".
We talk about our future, our deaths, what happens after we die with a sense of recollection. It's odd but I think we perhaps do it because it's the only way we know how; we only know how to remember. Our only experiences of death are those whereby we have experienced someone dying or have read/watched someone either dying or experienced someone else dying. In a weird way, we are recollecting.
Similarly, we can only imagine was our future will be like by the experiences we've already had. Take, for example, university. My experience of university is purely through open days, hearing other people's experiences and visiting my friend - my idea of what it will be like is formed purely by experiences.
I can sit here and imagine who I'm going to marry, or what I'm going to do as a job, or many other things - but that is limited by my prior knowledge of people, marriage, jobs, what I enjoy etc. Our past, in a way, limits our musings of our future.
We can only imagine a future based on existing ideas. It's like trying to create Pratchett's 'octarine' - you cannot imagine it, and Pratchett makes this clear by the fact that "Rincewind always thought it looked sort of greenish-purple." All of our imaginings are based purely on our experiences and that is why "imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia".
That's so true - all our imaginings about the future is just a compilations of other's memories or experiences we want.
ReplyDeleteAs always, I thoroughly enjoying reading your post
:D