Clio/Too Far To See
From Eccentric Flower
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«Clio
Too Far To See
Recently Clio had the pleasure of reading a very clever greeting card designed to mark an upcoming occasion. The front of the card says
12.19.6.15.2 Long Count
The interior of the card says Have a nice day
The occasion, of course, is the end/beginning of the Gregorian year. Clio has always found New Year celebrations somewhat odd - it's not as if time stops, after all. Perhaps it is because of mortality that humans feel the need to celebrate having outlasted another year. At any rate Clio does not object to the "any excuse for a party" philosophy; she merely points out her puzzlement. This year - the Gregorian year 1999 CE, which as Clio writes this is on the brink of running out - is marked by especially fervent celebrations, and Clio is even more puzzled than usual. No, Clio is not puzzled over trivial matters such as "when does the new millennium begin" - well, perhaps she is, but not in the sense of 2000 vs. 2001. She answers both that question and the broader one with another question: Why should you care? Clio is aware that the preceding paragraph was rather imprecise. She'll try again. A millennium elapses every second. At any given moment, there is a time which was exactly a thousand years prior to that moment. All boundaries for a "millennium" are arbitrary. Why did the Gregorian-calendar world not celebrate the end of the millennium 950-1949? From Dark Ages to Cold War, from stagnation to stagnation in an endless cycle with only upheaval between. Or why not celebrate the end of a millennium on the rare occasions when a year comes along that changes the entire face of the world forever? The latter question, at least, has a simple answer: Because none of us, not even Clio, is very good at recognizing those crucial years when they happen. We only realize them later, when the passage of time compresses and blurs events. Then we try to mark them retroactively, and often do a bad job of it. Most histories and monuments are built upon a foundation of lies, errors and omissions. It's the human way to want to rewrite the past - or to get it wrong. Even the single most significant historical event for Christians - the birth of the Christ - contains an error; no one is sure exactly when Christ was born, but it was almost certainly around 4 or 5 BCE, not 1 CE. So perhaps it is not a good idea to mark a watershed year by restarting one's calendar. The truth is, no one can say with any certainty which events from the present day will be remembered a thousand years from now. History is too dense - so dense that Clio, who forgets nothing, often has trouble sorting out the information cluttering her mind. It is impossible to take the last thousand years "in retrospect." It is impossible even to take a hundred years in retrospect and do the subject any justice, although Clio has seen a number of books and articles of late which attempt the feat. It is difficult even to summarize the major events of the last fifty years. Just as an exercise, Clio began writing down all the events from the half-century 1001-1050 she felt were significant for that time period. When her arm grew tired, she stopped. Clio surely does not need to point out that "information density" is much higher in 1951-2000 than in 1001-1050, does she? One thing is certain: The more distant the event becomes, the more major it must be to be remembered. Clio dates the existence of human history from somewhere between 5000 and 4000 BCE, when humanity was beginning to clump and form cities. She finds the Jewish calendar, which begins numbering in 3760 BCE, to be a much better tool for comprehending the length of the scale. Five thousand years is a long time, even for Clio. What events do you think of when you call 4000 BCE to mind? Not many, yes? Perhaps that isn't a fair example. Very well, here's another: Many things happened in the years 1901-1950, but Clio is guessing that another few hundred years from now - after every human who lived through those years is dead, and their children are dead, and their grandchildren are dead - that half-century will be known only as a time of world war. All the other events will have vanished from the popular memory, to be found only in books by those who know where to look. If you will forgive Clio a metaphor: You are walking down a long road, gathering stones that lie beside the roadbed. As you continue down the road, you wish to keep picking up stones, but your hands are getting full. Gradually you discard stones so you will have room to get more, keeping only the ones which are prettiest or ugliest or most unusual. The farther you go, the more selective you become about which of the older stones you will keep. But all the newer stones are favored - they have the appeal of novelty - and tend to dominate your handful - until you've held them for a while and need to make room again. Clio is not necessarily calling that a bad thing. She does not expect humans to remember everything - that's her peculiar curse, and she wouldn't wish it on anyone. She does, however, wish that humans had more of a sense of perspective, more of a realization that the things which look so important now - like the dawn of a year whose first digit is a 2 in one particular calendar system - will seem like a rock to be discarded only a few years down the road.
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