If tomorrow all the things were gone

I worked for all my life…

Lee Greenwood

On the screen, a civilisation crashed and died. The ruins were shown. I commented, 'Here comes the ubi sunt? moment.'

Elektra said, 'The what?'

Ubi sunt?/Where are…? is a trope that goes back millennia in human literature and rhetoric. It refers to memory in a particular way: as more than one of the Doctors Who have remarked, 'Nothing lasts.' Ubi sunt? is that moment where you look back at the glory days of the past and realise they're gone forever. The Latin reference goes back to the Vulgate version of the Bible. As the old hymn asks, 'Where are kings and empires now/'

Lately, I've been reading the works of Ida Tarbell, a 19th-20th-century journalist and historian. I got interested in her work because she grew up about an hour's drive from where I am. In addition to being a well-traveled and accomplished woman (multi-lingual, too, not bad for being born in a log cabin), Tarbell was one of the premier Lincoln scholars of her day. She had something in common with Lincoln, besides being born in a log cabin:

Both of these people had a mental crisis when they found out about older civilisations.

Not since I discovered the world not to have been made in six days of twenty-four hours each, had I been so intellectually and spiritually upset.

– Ida Tarbell, All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography, pp143-144

It made such a mite of a man no bettern' a fly. That's what bothered Mr. Lincoln. I know how he felt. That's the way it hit me when I first began to understand all the stars were worlds like ours.

'Billy Brown', quoted in 'In Lincoln's Chair', by Ida Tarbell

I always used to have problems with the idea that people had existential crises about matters of fact. I mean, we don't make the facts. If we got them wrong, that's our problem. The universe is under no obligation to match our expectations. As Arthur Conan Doyle said through Sherlock Holmes, why should anybody care whether the sun goes around the earth, or the earth around the sun? I mean, of course it makes a difference to NASA: you've got to point the rockets. But I decline to adopt the hubristic notion that solar systems need my approval to do what they do. Part of this #homohumilis idea is realising we don't determine reality, and we can't outvote physics, chemistry, biology, or star systems.

The facts about the solar system bothered people enough to imprison scientists for saying it. It bothered people enough to fight with each other about mental models of the world. It still does, in some quarters. It is this fact, and not the others, that should give us pause.

On closer examination, we find out that what bothered Ida Tarbell and Abe Lincoln wasn't the age of the earth or the existence of dinosaurs, but the fact that civilisation had been tried before. And failed. Every single time. Oh, your really good civilisation will last you a thousand years. But even good civilisations wear out, sooner or later. The one you have is past its use-by date, and you're stuck shopping around for a new one.

That bugs people.

A huge factor in this #beagoodancestor business, as I've said before, is figuring out what's important. It's also a good idea to figure out what you can't change. No matter how hard you fight, you ain't gonna make this civilisation last forever. The Thousand-Year Reich lasted 13 years. This one's not in the best of health. If we work hard, we might prolong its existence, but sooner or later, we're going to void the warranty. So what do we do?

Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:

And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.

And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:

And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

Matthew 7:24-27 [Public Domain Version]

Whatever you build, build wisely, sayeth Jesus of Nazareth. Don't invest your spiritual capital in junk-bond ideas. Plan. Does it make a lot of sense to spend your time worrying about fashion? (Ask Bluebottle.) Is your whole raison d'etre about sport, or advertising trends, or 'news'? Think again, please. It matters greatly whether we leave our descendants a decent planet to live on. It matters, a lot, that we leave them access to what little we have learned about life, the universe, and everything.

Wait! I hear you shout. If civilisations go under, isn't learning things futile?

I'm glad you asked. No, it is not.

Go and read How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, by Thomas Cahill. You see, Rome fell. And oh, yes, some barbarians burned the biggest library in the world. But those monks kept copying. Scriptoria saved what the Greeks and Romans knew. Eventually, Europeans got settled enough to start reading again. And they didn't have to start from scratch. Thanks to those monks. Who copied it all by hand. You've got a Word program, so stop complaining.

There were ancient civilisations that left us almost no records. We can't learn from them, if all they left us were puzzling statues. But others, like the Sumerians, left us written records. We can learn things about them, and from them. The more we know, the better we can rebuild after the next catastrophe. Forget hoarding batteries and ammo: stockpile knowledge.

Want to be a good ancestor? Stop taking yourself so seriously, and start taking other people's needs seriously. Stop acting like you and your notions are going to be in charge forever, and start figuring out what you want to store up that's worthy of the future. Build on a rock, not on sand.

PS And stop acting like you get to vote on reality.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

28.09.20 Front Page

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