Assorted Thoughts

“The past is nothing but the memory of the past”

As a result of struggling to find a single quote in the article which I felt neatly summed up its essence, I picked this as it caught my eye with first its rather poetic appeal, and a rather deceptive simplicity. This statement seems to be a reflection of the fact that, once it has escaped the purview of fleeting moment that is the present, an event becomes relegated to a complete physical non-existence, except for in the mind. All we are referring to when we speak of the past, then, is a collection of fragmented accounts of events which have escaped our immediate sensory experience.

There is a worrying aspect to this definition, however: that there doesn’t seem to be adequate distinction made between the “past”, and history. Here, past is presented as being merely a large collection of memories, or, a highly unrefined history of sorts. I say worrying, because this definition seems very limiting. The past is far more than merely the available, decidedly finite memories of humankind. We traditionally speak of the past as being a hypothetical construct, a collection of all the points in time (and space) which existed before the “present”. But here, the past is merely a small portion of all those occurred events, as it is merely those which have had the fortune of not being lowered to a state of complete (i.e. ,even intellectual) non-existence, which, owing to our incomplete memory, makes up an infinitesimal portion of the whole.

But maybe, in reference to history, a new definition could be helpful. Memory is “of and about the past”, and the past itself is an elaborate memory, placed in the unifying framework of history. The above, larger definition, is all very well on paper, but for historical purposes, there exists no such infinite well called the “past”, from where we can keep drawing our wealth of history. The past that is within our power to identify with, to understand, is what is contained in the collective of all the memories of humanity. The Polish philosopher, Leszek Kolakowski reflects on this point, about how these past events are “recreated by us on the basis of our present experience- and it is only our present experience, our present reconstruction of the past, that is real”.

Another interesting quotation from the article comes in page 84: “Hence, only the (human) thinking that is capable of not-knowing and forgetting is capable of memory and history.” The central idea behind this point is that (as summed up in the next line) is that our memory, and hence our ability to perceive “history”, is a result of our fundamental inability to experience, and reflect on this experience at the same time. This seems to me to be a comment on how we perceive time itself, as it allows us to distinguish between the present (the experience), and the past (the reflection). Our “incompleteness in thinking”, of forgetfulness thus allows there to be a clear distinction between what lies in the past, which is hazy and never fully complete, and what lies in the present. For, if there were no such deficiencies to our thought process, we would have a complete knowledge and remembrance of the past, and hence be able to recreate, and re-experience events in the past with as much clarity as the present itself.

This got me thinking whether the “past”, or history, as it exists now is as complete as it needs to be. What could be the possible effects of a full knowledge of the past (in terms of the history-relevant definition)? There are existing philosophical notions about how a main aspect of how we perceive time is due to our recognition of the distinction between tenses. If this idea were to be extrapolated (perhaps naively) to the much larger picture, what would come of humanity in possession of this wealth of knowledge, this complete history? I might be making an error in drawing parallels between history and past & an individual and humanity. But the question is, once this knowledge is in the hands of the collective human consciousness, what would happen to our notion of time? If past and present can lie on a similar plane, where does the future fit in?

The second question in particular has further-reaching implications. The previous goal of history was to search for “law-like regularities in history”, and perhaps provide an indication of the future. This may have just been just the product of optimistic 19^th century determinism, but if this thought experiment did actually happen to take place, and we were able to look at past and present on a similar plane, would the future be all that unknown to us?

One definite conclusion to this very extreme, unlikely scenario? Astrologers would be a good deal more relevant than historians.