Okay, let’s start with a little test.
That’s enough. Pencils down.
You might have been able to answer those three questions. If so, congrats. You’re more knowledgeable than I because I had to look up the answers. (1. Revolutions occurred in France, Austria, Prussia, Hungary, Bohemia, and in Italy; 2. Francis I, King of France from 1515 to 1547; 3. Antoninus Pius aka Titus Aelius Hadrianus and Antoninus Augustus Pius; 4. I have no idea, and you probably no idea)
The gap in my knowledge is typical. Much of the past is lost. There’s no way any of us could know all the details of what went on in previous centuries or millennia. And the deeper past is filled with more gaps than we can count. Although some remnants of the past are still held in Mind, even they are generalities; they lack specifics: We don’t know much about Charles Martel and the Battle at Tours except that it was a turning point in preserving European culture and shaping Western Civilization. But who other than some historian specialist or a college history student preparing for a history test needs to know more? No one can point to the exact location of the Battle of Tours. Was it closer to Poitiers? There’s a gap in knowledge about one of the most significant events of the past.
Gaps in historical knowledge are inevitable in a world of finite beings. Heck! We even have gaps in our own lives, as evidenced by the expression, “Oh! I forgot about that.” Gaps are punctuated by significant memories. I would argue that gaps dominate both the past of humanity in total and the past of individuals in total. That such gaps exist probably derives from our inability to see ourselves as continuums though we feel we have continued. That is, I know I’m somehow the same person I was in kindergarten, but I know that I have changed. The continuum of my life is more a series of episodes that surely have added to the sum I am today, but any past event represented only the “me” of the moment as I was at that time. I have, therefore, lived both a continuous and a discontinuous life.
Gaps: They’re the discontinuities. And sometimes when I look on that dichotomy between the continuous me and the discontinuous mes, I realize that often my present me lies unconformably on my past mes. In other words, I don’t quite know how to connect those discontinuous mes to my present.
If you were to drive to Alexandria Bay and elsewhere along what is called the Frontenac Arch and along the eastern side of Lake Ontario into the Canadian province, you will see in some road cuts an unconformity, call it the Great Unconformity. Tilted and metamorphosed much older rocks, some of them ancient lithified sand dunes, lie beneath horizontally oriented carbonates and other rocks. At the unconformity, Paleozoic rocks some 400-500 million years old overlie rocks in excess of a billion years old. There’s a gap between the rock units of widely different age. The older rocks underwent erosion long before and up until the younger rocks were deposited as sediments and then lithified.
That Great Unconformity is a gap of great immensity, a half billion years or so—give or take a week as I usually say. But it’s not unusual. the Grand Canyon also has a Great Unconformity, and its gap is a missing billion years of rock. So, what happened to 500 million years’ worth of rock at Alexandria Bay and a billion years’ worth at the Grand Canyon? Either the rocks were there and have been eroded or there never were such rocks.
Let’s revisit that test. It seems to me that a mention of the famous Santayana statement (“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”) is applicable here. The problem we all have is that gaps are inevitable, even our own personal gaps. I think I’ll admit that I have made the same mistake more than once (overeating, for example, or exercising less than I should around the holidays). The reason for the repetition is that memories have more gaps, more discontinuity, that continuities. We can’t keep in mind all that was and all that we were. Surely, we often operate as though the present is all that is. And even when we do recall, the recalling is often tinged by the present and lacking in detail. Remembering isn’t even a guarantee against repeating because remembering itself is often flawed by intervening events and false memories.
It appears to me that I—and maybe you—have a tendency to lay down new layers of living over eroded older layers. I—and maybe you—have erased some of the past. But that might be how humans move ineluctably toward their futures. Not everything that occurred is worth remembering. Some of what occurred is definitely worth forgetting.
The present doesn’t always lie conformably and continuously on the past. In fact, it mostly lies on unconformities. And that might be good. It means, for example, that like the changing environments that either laid down new sediments or eroded the older ones away, we can change. We can begin again like a reformed criminal leaving prison behind to become a contributing member of society or a drug addict leaving addiction behind to lay down a new lifestyle.
In this tug of war between continuity and discontinuity, humans can selectively erase layers of past lives and emplace new layers unconformably on the old. It is in this ability to build unconformably on the past that is the essence of hope.
- Name the various European revolutions of the mid-nineteenth century.
- Name one king of France during the Reformation.
- Who was emperor prior to the reign of Marcus Aurelius?
- What were you doing the day after your seventh birthday?
That’s enough. Pencils down.
You might have been able to answer those three questions. If so, congrats. You’re more knowledgeable than I because I had to look up the answers. (1. Revolutions occurred in France, Austria, Prussia, Hungary, Bohemia, and in Italy; 2. Francis I, King of France from 1515 to 1547; 3. Antoninus Pius aka Titus Aelius Hadrianus and Antoninus Augustus Pius; 4. I have no idea, and you probably no idea)
The gap in my knowledge is typical. Much of the past is lost. There’s no way any of us could know all the details of what went on in previous centuries or millennia. And the deeper past is filled with more gaps than we can count. Although some remnants of the past are still held in Mind, even they are generalities; they lack specifics: We don’t know much about Charles Martel and the Battle at Tours except that it was a turning point in preserving European culture and shaping Western Civilization. But who other than some historian specialist or a college history student preparing for a history test needs to know more? No one can point to the exact location of the Battle of Tours. Was it closer to Poitiers? There’s a gap in knowledge about one of the most significant events of the past.
Gaps in historical knowledge are inevitable in a world of finite beings. Heck! We even have gaps in our own lives, as evidenced by the expression, “Oh! I forgot about that.” Gaps are punctuated by significant memories. I would argue that gaps dominate both the past of humanity in total and the past of individuals in total. That such gaps exist probably derives from our inability to see ourselves as continuums though we feel we have continued. That is, I know I’m somehow the same person I was in kindergarten, but I know that I have changed. The continuum of my life is more a series of episodes that surely have added to the sum I am today, but any past event represented only the “me” of the moment as I was at that time. I have, therefore, lived both a continuous and a discontinuous life.
Gaps: They’re the discontinuities. And sometimes when I look on that dichotomy between the continuous me and the discontinuous mes, I realize that often my present me lies unconformably on my past mes. In other words, I don’t quite know how to connect those discontinuous mes to my present.
If you were to drive to Alexandria Bay and elsewhere along what is called the Frontenac Arch and along the eastern side of Lake Ontario into the Canadian province, you will see in some road cuts an unconformity, call it the Great Unconformity. Tilted and metamorphosed much older rocks, some of them ancient lithified sand dunes, lie beneath horizontally oriented carbonates and other rocks. At the unconformity, Paleozoic rocks some 400-500 million years old overlie rocks in excess of a billion years old. There’s a gap between the rock units of widely different age. The older rocks underwent erosion long before and up until the younger rocks were deposited as sediments and then lithified.
That Great Unconformity is a gap of great immensity, a half billion years or so—give or take a week as I usually say. But it’s not unusual. the Grand Canyon also has a Great Unconformity, and its gap is a missing billion years of rock. So, what happened to 500 million years’ worth of rock at Alexandria Bay and a billion years’ worth at the Grand Canyon? Either the rocks were there and have been eroded or there never were such rocks.
Let’s revisit that test. It seems to me that a mention of the famous Santayana statement (“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”) is applicable here. The problem we all have is that gaps are inevitable, even our own personal gaps. I think I’ll admit that I have made the same mistake more than once (overeating, for example, or exercising less than I should around the holidays). The reason for the repetition is that memories have more gaps, more discontinuity, that continuities. We can’t keep in mind all that was and all that we were. Surely, we often operate as though the present is all that is. And even when we do recall, the recalling is often tinged by the present and lacking in detail. Remembering isn’t even a guarantee against repeating because remembering itself is often flawed by intervening events and false memories.
It appears to me that I—and maybe you—have a tendency to lay down new layers of living over eroded older layers. I—and maybe you—have erased some of the past. But that might be how humans move ineluctably toward their futures. Not everything that occurred is worth remembering. Some of what occurred is definitely worth forgetting.
The present doesn’t always lie conformably and continuously on the past. In fact, it mostly lies on unconformities. And that might be good. It means, for example, that like the changing environments that either laid down new sediments or eroded the older ones away, we can change. We can begin again like a reformed criminal leaving prison behind to become a contributing member of society or a drug addict leaving addiction behind to lay down a new lifestyle.
In this tug of war between continuity and discontinuity, humans can selectively erase layers of past lives and emplace new layers unconformably on the old. It is in this ability to build unconformably on the past that is the essence of hope.
RSS Feed