The Evolution of a Disregard for History

Do we assume that we are smarter than those who lived before us? Do we assume that if only they could have thought of the automobile or the ballpoint pen or derivatives they would have invented them?
It seems to me that elements of this argument contain truth—our knowledge of mathematics increases; things that were long unproved get proved. Our technology is greater than that of any earlier peoples, so far as we know. But perhaps this is all to say that we’re cleverer, not necessarily smarter. Or smarter in a way that’s important to us but simply may not have been to earlier people.

Certainly Archimedes had a genius for invention, but declined to share much of it with the world, disdaining application and deciding that it was unethical to perpetuate some of his creations. Was he a crackpot, or did his view represent the views of others in the ancient world?

We could as easily turn the argument around, at least in thought, and take the part of some ancients. In the last four or five hundred years, they might ask, have you written epics and plays as sturdy as the Odyssey or Oedipus? Do your buildings rival the pyramids, or the cathedrals of medieval Europe? Are you closer to Nirvana than we were?

The difference, it seems, is not a difference of intelligence, it’s something else—priority, focus, mentality, or consciousness.

When Allan Bloom asks, obnoxiously, where is the Zulu’s Plato, he’s narrowing the question too much, unbalancing the scale (and assuming that he in 20th century Chicago is somehow closer to Plato than a Zulu, simply because he participates in an academic tradition that honors Plato…).

The question, perhaps not one we have the historical knowledge or understanding to answer, is, what was as important to the ancient Zulus (or their ancestors) as philosophy was to Plato, and how did they manifest this? To assume that because we don’t know about it, it didn’t exist is just an error of logic.

And to assume that our priorities or mentality are superior to those of the ancients according to arbitrary rules that favor us before the competition is announced is just unfair. Worse, it leads to a disregard for the possibility of seeing the world in a different way, to a devaluing of history, and to a narrowing of each of us who thinks this way.