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Why is the past important?

Lark

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Well bitches! :happy2:

Make with the answers, dont make me sick ceecee and the pussy mafia on you :newwink::hi:
 

onemoretime

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Do I have to quote Faulkner?

The past is important because it is still there, it's just not perceptible in a conventional sense.
 

Rail Tracer

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"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
 

Red Herring

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"He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth." - Goethe
 

onemoretime

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"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

I don't think I agree with this quote anymore. It expresses a distinctly post-Enlightenment view that we are capable of attaining a linear progression toward a sort of utopia, as long as we have the right kind of knowledge. It also rejects the notion of cyclicality as a feature of human cultures, even as so many other ways of looking at the world consistently assert the centrality of cycles in our collective existence.

What strikes me about this quote is that many times, people do remember the lessons of the past, but still repeat those actions, because circumstances dictate that they must do so. Or they may change the action, but still find the same result, because it only attended to a superficial manifestation of a much deeper systematic pattern.
 

Giggly

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Well bitches! :happy2:

Make with the answers, dont make me sick ceecee and the pussy mafia on you :newwink::hi:

Pussy mafia.... Hmm, is this different than the pussy cartel? :thinking: *deep thoughts*
 

Rail Tracer

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I don't think I agree with this quote anymore. It expresses a distinctly post-Enlightenment view that we are capable of attaining a linear progression toward a sort of utopia, as long as we have the right kind of knowledge. It also rejects the notion of cyclicality as a feature of human cultures, even as so many other ways of looking at the world consistently assert the centrality of cycles in our collective existence.

What strikes me about this quote is that many times, people do remember the lessons of the past, but still repeat those actions, because circumstances dictate that they must do so. Or they may change the action, but still find the same result, because it only attended to a superficial manifestation of a much deeper systematic pattern.

Repeating those actions while knowing the actions is not learning from those actions. ;) You can sort of call it a purposeful forgetfulness. (I.E. A person that knows smoking is bad, but continue to smoke anyways.)

Changing the action, while getting the same result, however, is learning from it. Changing the action does not necessitate that the past will not be repeated. It just means you aren't condemned to repeat the past if you succeed. (I.E. A person that goes through steps to stop smoking, but find it hard to stop smoking or finally quits smoking.)
 

93JC

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Planning where to go is better thought out if you consider where you've been.
 

Rasofy

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The man who learns from his mistakes is a wise man.
The man who learns from other people's mistakes is a demigod.
 

onemoretime

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Repeating those actions while knowing the actions is not learning from those actions. ;) You can sort of call it a purposeful forgetfulness. (I.E. A person that knows smoking is bad, but continue to smoke anyways.)

Changing the action, while getting the same result, however, is learning from it. Changing the action does not necessitate that the past will not be repeated. It just means you aren't condemned to repeat the past if you succeed. (I.E. A person that goes through steps to stop smoking, but find it hard to stop smoking or finally quits smoking.)

That's the thing. I'm not so sure that you aren't condemned to repeat the past, even if you do succeed. Instead, I see it less as a damning, and more as an opportunity to come to terms with what has happened in the past, and is happening at that moment. To use your smoking example, there is no one point where a person "quits" smoking. The process is that of being able to continually deny yourself a cigarette when you want one. So, the point at issue isn't when one is "trying to quit." Instead, it is those many points when one craves a cigarette that will follow indefinitely. Remembering that you enjoyed smoking, or that you decided to quit, isn't the determinative factor in this situation, because both would involve repeating the past. Instead, it's the motivating factors of the present that drive the decision (e.g. wanting to keep one's health, not smoking for the sake of one's children, etc).

The past establishes those motivating factors, or more precisely, describes their movement in the fourth dimension.
 

Such Irony

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The past affects how things are today. One thing leads to another and you can see the consequences of different actions. If a different action had been taken, the resulting consequences would have been different, resulting in an alternate timeline.
 

RaptorWizard

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The present is the result of everything that has happened in the past, and the present shapes the future.
 

sprinkles

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Egg noodles. You'll understand this when you eventually ask the question that is answered with 'Egg noodles'.
 
W

WALMART

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So if the past can be seen as the anti-derivative of the present, how far back need we go before it becomes an indiscernable probabilistic mess?

Hard to say for certainly myself, but I'd imagine a tad after the universe was expansive enough to form the elementary particles, though we still see probabilistic events today... making past in that context irrelevant.
 
G

garbage

Guest
One more way to phrase the same damn thing that everyone's already saying:

The past provides context and further information for our present decisions and experiences. We can determine our trajectory a lot more accurately if we have more data--we can see if we're headed in the 'right' direction.
 
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