“Primitive.” “Archaic.” “Old Fashioned.” “Out-of-Date.” “Backwards.”
Of all the many ways we can insult a person’s intelligence, it is astounding how many of them imply or outright state that the idiot in question must belong to some past age. We in the Western World are so used to this prejudicial assumption that many of us have never given thought to how odd it is. Most every other culture, past and present, assumes the reverse: that their forebears were wiser, stronger, and more worthy of praise than their degenerate decedents.
Now it is not true that we have discarded this idea entirely. We still have people in the past that we revere, but our reverence of the past only goes back to certain dates (1776, for example, or 1968), or else only applies to certain times and places (for example, certain atheists who adore classical Greece and Rome, but despise everything associated with the Middle Ages). There does not appear to be any logical or scientific criteria for this selective reverence, save that the people from the past we admire tend to be people who hold the same views as the person revering them. This is troubling, and a bit dishonest, because the admirer seems to be saying that people of the past are only worthy of respect if he can see himself (or the fads of his age that he likes) in them.
He may, for example, deride his ancestors for not believing that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Now the Earth does indeed revolve around the Sun, but how exactly to we moderns know this? Did we make the needed observations and calculations ourselves? Likely not. Rather, we learned this fact in a textbook. It required little effort on our part; all we had to do was accept the authority of someone we recognized as more knowledgeable than us.
Just like every other human being in history.
It might be objected that people of the past were less intelligent because they believed in witchcraft and magic. But there are plenty of self-described witches and preachers of New Age nonsense today, even in the supposedly secular West.
It might be objected that people in the past believed ridiculous things about the world. But our modern, scientific society has large numbers of people who believe that the Earth is flat and that vaccinations cause Autism (and also that Autism is the WORST thing in the world).
It might be objected that people of the past regularly formed mobs and attacked innocent people for ridiculous reasons. If such a person believes such things do not happen today, I can only point him to Twitter.
It might be objected that people of the past practiced strange rituals and sacrifices, killing massive numbers of animals and even humans in gruesome acts that accomplished nothing. But if Rene Girard is correct, these rituals did accomplish something: they provided the community with a catharsis that kept the peace (much better than our modern elections seem to do, I might add).
In short, every charge labeled against our forebears can be laid against us moderns as well. While it is true that, say, a caveman would have difficulty in our society, we would have just as much difficulty in his. How many of his neighbors would laugh at our obvious stupidity? (“I mean, it’s common sense that those berries are poisonous.”) Different skill sets do not measure intelligence one way or the other.
Furthermore, even in the midst of nightmarish survival circumstances, the caveman still found time to paint those mysterious animal figures on his cave wall. Likewise, the earliest literature we have from ancient societies is not merely full of feasts and fornication (though there is that), but also of deep questions about the natural world, the nature of Man, and the nature of the universe. And each of these, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Book of Job, were transmitted orally long before they were written down. As in, they were memorized word for word, and told and retold several times, even after they were common knowledge. Clearly these things, these pictures and words, mattered to them. Just as tales and art matter to most of us moderns.
As G.K. Chesterton put it, “Art is the signature of Man.”
In sum, check your chronological privilege. You are only smarter or wiser than your ancestors in the same way that a child sitting on her father’s shoulders is taller than he is.
Comments