Recently I am thinking and writing about how every culture lives in some utopian past. There is really no exception to this. If you think of any culture you will recognize that it is framed by a utopian mythology projected onto the past. But like with everything there are variations and deviations. In every culture there is a contaminated artist cursed with sensory imbalance that makes him or her aware of the present. That’s why every religion prefers its symbols dead, there is no danger that an object of a myth will come in contact with an artist and risk being humanized.
And then there are practical revolutionaries who also project, but onto the future. This is your classical Communism and Nazism – the curses of the 20th century. Paradoxically there is very little of this in America, despite of the fact that America was born in a revolution, not a messianic one, but rather a corporate reorganization to right the wrong tax code. In fact the recent messianic aberration involving the President notwithstanding, on balance America is very much into pragmatic present.
But there is one thing in common between cultures driven by a revolutionary ethos and religious ethos. Both emphasize the past and the future to deny and avoid the present. Amazingly for most “civilized” history people lived with a messianic religion. For a ruler this is a fantastic disposition. You can evoke the past or the future mythology and play it against each other. There is always some deprivation that is justified by the precedent or the expectations. For the rulers this is a perfect social management tool, you can always placate the fools imploring a sacrifice to the past or the future, you can even easily convince people to give up their lives for this. And people will forever be indebted to the ruler who unburdened them from the horror of the present, they will be forever grateful for the sweet inebriation, the bliss of never noticing a meeting in real-time. The life of a spiritual commoner avoids sensory contact with the present at all costs, it aims to never experience a waking moment of now!
Photo by Dan Zollmann – Twee fietsen onder een brug (Two bicycles under a bridge) via flickr/Canvas_TV
Further Reading:
Rear-view Mirror Redux
The Present Time as a Historical Detour
Calcified Patterns
