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Ancestors vs Whippersnappers: Are old saws 'smarter' than newfangled contraptions? (my alternative title for the thread)
A question has come up a few times around the forum about whether or not anybody can be "smarter" than their ancestors...
I'm intrigued by this question but a little confused about it too - what does it mean?
This is usually in reference to changing social mores, I think, but anybody can correct this if I have missed something, or just wants to add something.
I'm really inclined to rephrase it as "are people / can people be, more advanced than their predecessors?"
The reason I find this phrasing more clear is because being more advanced is something a society is hopefully building towards, rather than any intergenerational competition around whatever it means to be "smart"
I like the word predecessors better than ancestors, because any of us may or may not be living in a society populated by our own biological ancestors.
Also, if at any given time we are thinking of something specific, like a profession or institution we are part of, our predecessors may not be our ancestors at all.
Anyway, the shortest, simplest, and most optimistic answers, I think, are some variations of YES! We are more advanced than our predecessors BECAUSE of them, of everything we learned from them, their hard work, and their mistakes. or YES - We had BETTER be, we need to be, or their hard work was for nothing.
Another way to look at is to clarify - WHICH ancestors/predecessors? How many generations? How many hundreds of thousands of years are we talking?
Is there any assumption that they were all of the same mind and contemporary society is the first to do anything differently?
Another question which comes up for me is - what, if anything, is wrong with any current generation intuiting that they know their own world, and know the unique challenges they face and what is best for themselves in their world - which may not be what anybody's ancestors or predecessors ever dealt with in quite the same way before. Are we supposed to be duplicating the old, no matter what, or learning from the old (what they have done well and poorly, what they have done rightly or wrongly, what they have done knowledgeably or ignorantly, what they have done wisely or foolishly) and building for the next generation?
Sometimes, doing something that will change everything, if it is done to take better care of more people, hooray.
It could be radically different from what someone 100 years ago would have done, or 1000 years ago, or 10 thousand, or however long
Our solutions for our time
Rather than a competition about being smart, as such, or being compliant vs being whippersnappers or something...
A question has come up a few times around the forum about whether or not anybody can be "smarter" than their ancestors...
I'm intrigued by this question but a little confused about it too - what does it mean?
This is usually in reference to changing social mores, I think, but anybody can correct this if I have missed something, or just wants to add something.
I'm really inclined to rephrase it as "are people / can people be, more advanced than their predecessors?"
The reason I find this phrasing more clear is because being more advanced is something a society is hopefully building towards, rather than any intergenerational competition around whatever it means to be "smart"
I like the word predecessors better than ancestors, because any of us may or may not be living in a society populated by our own biological ancestors.
Also, if at any given time we are thinking of something specific, like a profession or institution we are part of, our predecessors may not be our ancestors at all.
Anyway, the shortest, simplest, and most optimistic answers, I think, are some variations of YES! We are more advanced than our predecessors BECAUSE of them, of everything we learned from them, their hard work, and their mistakes. or YES - We had BETTER be, we need to be, or their hard work was for nothing.
Another way to look at is to clarify - WHICH ancestors/predecessors? How many generations? How many hundreds of thousands of years are we talking?
Is there any assumption that they were all of the same mind and contemporary society is the first to do anything differently?
Another question which comes up for me is - what, if anything, is wrong with any current generation intuiting that they know their own world, and know the unique challenges they face and what is best for themselves in their world - which may not be what anybody's ancestors or predecessors ever dealt with in quite the same way before. Are we supposed to be duplicating the old, no matter what, or learning from the old (what they have done well and poorly, what they have done rightly or wrongly, what they have done knowledgeably or ignorantly, what they have done wisely or foolishly) and building for the next generation?
Sometimes, doing something that will change everything, if it is done to take better care of more people, hooray.
It could be radically different from what someone 100 years ago would have done, or 1000 years ago, or 10 thousand, or however long
Our solutions for our time
Rather than a competition about being smart, as such, or being compliant vs being whippersnappers or something...
... seems you trod on a toe!
