This piece by Ryan Avent
displays a rare sense of humility in
admitting how difficult it is to imagine the future and how our descendants
might judge us. To participate, consider
how you think about the past, and in particular the decisions made by our
predecessors. Do you lament or celebrate
the widespread adoption of the automobile, or the industrial development that
polluted so much of our environment, or... anything? The
sad truth is we think little about the past at all, the world is what it is and
we try to make the best of it.
This is part of what
I dislike about preservationism, the idea that we should preserve structures so
that future generations can enjoy them.
Who knows what future generations will enjoy or value or need? Think about BDS shutting
down the Green Castle cart pod in part because a neighborhood planning
document written in 1987 didn't contemplate food carts. 1987!
That's only 24 years ago, yet I have absolutely no idea, interest, or
even desire to know what people back then thought except as a purely historical
concern. How much less compelling would
be the ideas and intentions of people from fifty years ago, or a hundred?
Preservation doesn't
save the past so much as it foists the present whether people want it or
not. Implicit is the belief that the
way things are now is the best that they could ever be, and that any change
would necessarily be for the worse. It
is narcissism writ large.
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