Wednesday, March 27, 2024

The Past....

 "A teenager has breakfast, then goes to the store to buy the latest CD of a new band.  The kid thinks he lives in a modern moment.  But who has defined what a 'band' is? Who defined a 'store'? Who defined a 'teenager'? Or 'breakfast'? To say nothing of all the rest, the kid's entire social setting - family, school, clothing, transportation and government.

"None of this has been decided in the present.  Most of it was decided hundreds of years ago. Five hundred years, a thousand years. This kid is sitting on top of a mountain that is the past. And he never notices it.  He is ruled by what he never sees, never thinks about, doesn't know. It is a form of coercion that is accepted without question.  This same kid is skeptical of other forms of control - parental restrictions, commercial messages, government laws.  But the invisible rule of the past, which decides nearly everything in his life, goes unquestioned."

 

-Michael Crichton, “Timeline”

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