Living In The Past, Part II
...Even those who see ‘the future,’
will see it in past terms,
since the past is the reference from
which all mankind must learn.
That grand, utopian future
of which so many dream,
is defined by what it escapes:
a past brutal and mean.
It’s shaped by what it doesn’t have,
compared to ages gone,
a vision based on past eras
stripped of all that went wrong.
And the sad thing of such visions,
I think it must be said,
is how quickly the all look stale,
how soon they look dated.
Look back on all the old scifi
from back in the fifties,
the future they imagined them
now seems quaint history.
It all seems such a waste of time,
trying to think like that,
much better to just see the truth
and lessons from the past.
The endless wisdom that was gleaned,
just waiting to be used,
and half the time we learn from it
we create something new.
Remember that the Renaissance
was folks looking at Greece,
thinking that they could learn from it,
soon after culture peaked.
Remember the Founding Fathers
we’re looking back at Rome,
a republic, no need for king,
from that so much has grown.
The truth is undeniable,
so long as we may last,
every single human alive
is living in the past.
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