So . . . I was at a one-day regional conference on Friday and one of the presenters opened with a Chinese proverb: If you want to know your past, examine your present situation; if you want to know your future, examine your present actions. The quote made sense for the research, which had to do with how people of different cultures use contextual information to make decisions. But it also really stuck with me, and not in a good way, kind of like the way you feel like you have fillings after eating caramel corn. I think its because this proverb is yet another example of how we believe that our past, present, and future are of our own making.
Let's look at the proverb again, the two parts separately. "If you want to know your past, examine your present situation." This would mean that everything (or least enough) of your current place in life is attributable to specific actions, decisions, and situations in your past, which is enough to make my head spin on all on its own. But it also gets worse - trying to explain your past from your present is (to borrow a notion from Nicholas Nassim Taleb) like looking at a puddle of water and imagining what the ice cube looked like before it melted. So not only is this idea difficult for me to swallow because it assumes linearity of action, but also because it requires omniscience.
The second part of the quote: "if you want to know your future, examine your present actions." Again, linearity and omniscience, but also ignorance of the actions of the trillions of other beings on the planet. Our future is wholly dependent on everything else that goes on in the world, whether that is because the geologic actions of the earth will result in another ice age, or because some dingbat dents our car in the parking lot and makes us late for the dentist. I could choose to pursue a line of research (an action) that I see as resulting in my eventual winning of the Nobel prize (my future), but that doesn't mean it's going to happen.
Yes, I know it's just a proverb and yes, I can see the basic logic of it. I get it. I just think that the reasoning is faulty and leads us to think in a dangerous direction. It's this type of thinking that leads to The Secret, where the big lesson from the book ($18.80, plus auxialliary materials ranging from $12.50 to $25.00) is that if you wish for something hard enough, you'll get it (and implicitly, if you fail to reach your goals it is because you didn't wish hard enough). This type of thinking leads us to believe that prayer heals wounds, that lucky charms work (the objects, not the cereal, which of course works fine if you're looking for insulation), and so on. The world doesn't work in a linear, knowable fashion.
So if you want to know your past, look into your past. Gather as much information as you can and plot it on a time chart. Asking yourself "how did I get from where I was then to where I am now" is a good starting point, but it is insufficient on its own. Dig deeper, and don't jump to conclusions (even if you have the mat) about what caused what.
And if you want to know your future, join the line. We all do. And if you ever figure out how, let me know and we'll go into business together.
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