In the first chapter of Richard Dawkins' "The Ancestor's Tale," he talks about the unwisdom of hindsight, the mistake that we can make by looking backwards at the evolution of species.
Dawkins is one of my favorite evolutionary scientists, partly because he's a good writer, but mostly because he makes it easy for me, a highschool student hanging around a 3.0 gpa (and a humanities person), to understand.
To paraphrase what Dawkins writes, when we look backwards it's easy to make the mistake that we are the final step, that we are the ultimate and the finale.
Dawkins wants, above all else, to make clear that we, the human species homo sapiens sapiens, are not the final step in the evolution of species. As we find out every day, we aren't the ultimate answer to everything (life's more fun not living in Pleasantville anyway).
When I write about the individual evolution (how the course of events throughout our lives impacts who we are) it's easy to spend most of my time looking backwards. The past offers the most concrete examples, because I can point to things that happened to me or people I know or things I've read and say "Hey, that is the cause of this, which caused this" and then explain the inevitable domino effect that leads up to the Now.
It is important to remember, though, that everything that has happened to us is not definite, is not final. Who we are is not the final answer. A species, like an individual, evolves for a long time, constantly changing through the generations until it dies. We live like that moment to moment.
The unwisdom of hindsight is something that is important, because it's not something that we can allow ourselves to get tied up in. It's really easy to trip over things, and it's much easier and when we spend our time looking backwards. Reflection is good, it's healthy. It helps us to glean the significance of some moments. Like anything, though, it's best in small quantities, because there are times when we need to look forward, so that we can plan ahead, and there are times we need to look at our own feet, so we don't trip.
Sometimes, we can learn as much from looking forward as we can from looking back.
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2 comments:
Dude, I wish I'd been as insightful as you at your age. You put my 25 y.o. Psych major ex to shame. I came via your comment at Second Innocence, keep up the good musings!
Alice Ronald
Thank you, Alice. It's much appreciated.
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