The Future is our History

The Tools of Historical Research Applied to the Future

Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash

We should not blame people for seeking greater certainty in their lives.  The maps we have of the world are always incomplete and capable of improvement.  The maps we have of the future are even less certain. Who would not welcome a reliable update to what lies in front of us and is potentially “trouble?”  And who does not fear that such “information” will render us less, not more, certain?

Living into and through the future has been the life work of social scientists (political scientist, economist, and political scientist). It is also that of the citizen in a democratic society.

A great help in learning the “rules of such a road” can be found in the methodology of the historian.   For the historian journeys into similar territories that have been largely unexplored, or previously seen with only limited clarity or objectivity.

John Boswell, a former Yale historian, expresses the uncertainties of such exploration in his introduction to Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, particularly in studies of areas that are “largely pioneering and hence provisional.” 

The caution he recommends can, however, be applied to much of our present efforts to understand the “modern world.”

“Later generations will certainly recognize many wrong turns, false leads, and dead ends mistakenly pursued by those who had no trails to follow, whose only landmarks were those they themselves posted. Once the terrain has been better mapped, it will be possible to improve initial surveys very substantially. Early studies may appear in retrospect absurdly roundabout or wholly useless. To this ineluctable hazard of early research is added the difficulty in the case at issue that a great many people believe they already know where the trails ought to lead, and they will blame the investigator not only for the inevitable errors at first explorations, but also for the extent to which his results however tentative and well-intentioned do not accord with their preconceptions. On the subject of such critics the writer can ask only that before condemning too harshly the placement of his signposts they first experience for themselves the difficulty of the terrain,”

The Genie, of course, is out of the bottle when it comes to explorers imagining new and better (?) maps of our social worlds. We cannot call back the pioneeers.  Nor, I believe, should we.    

More than in the past, even more as we become this future, we must read with care, caution and hope the best reports from serious scholars exploring the frontiers of life.

That is why so many of us are bewildered by the many, apparently well-meaning, folk that seek to limit the material that students read.  Should we not be giving the next generation a sympathetic introduction to these “reports from the front?” How else will they learn the life-long skills they will need to evaluate and form tentative judgements about new ideas and information? 

The choice is not between forbidding access to potentially “dangerous” ideas on the one hand or permitting a toxic “brainwashing” of “innocents.”

The choice is between allowing ignorance to multiply or providing the next generation the penetrating, skeptical, and tested tools needed to walk the pathways of the future with confidence and hope.