Alicia Mackey Huber argues we're living in the past without knowing it, inheriting old ideas we mistake for progress. She points to bloodletting and leeching as proof that what we believe now will look as foolish to people in 2400 as those practices look to us.
My frame of thinking is I genuinely would rather be respected by people in the 25th century than I would to be respected right now. Because the majority of everyone who lives right now is living in the past, living the ideas of dead people. Now. We think we're future forward, we think we're on the cutting edge. The majority of our values, ethics, norms, ideas, understandings really are of dead people. And that's been true for all of humanity. And you look back and you say in those eras, the future was always present and a very small sliver of society could identify it, but it was a very small sliver. And sometimes those people weren't vindicated for a hundred years or 200 years. That's why we can look back in the 16th century with this cold, detached, objective view and say it was so clear that leeching was not a good idea as a way, you know, bloodletting was not the right thing for Blankety Blank. That's why I say right now, I assume by default that the majority of that which is easily accessible to me in thought and action is dated. And I need to search relentlessly for the future because it's hiding. It's very hard to see.
