Looking at the past in order to see the future
Bucky Fuller called this action prognostication.
The further back you looked, the further forward you could see, he claimed.
It is all there; the present unravelling is a record on repeat. Historian Heather Cox Richardson is brilliant at demonstrating this. The lunacy in the US government today is not the first time.
Why is looking back at the past so important?
In healthy ecologies, we learn from our mistakes. We adjust and keep moving, avoiding repetition of our mistakes. We make reparations. We apologise. We learn to mean, never again. (Never again is aspirational. Often, never again is never again until we do it again.)
In unhealthy ecologies, history be damned. Knowing the truth of the past is dangerous for power, and power knows of its dangers by seeking to suppress the truth of history. Present and future only, all the riches of past learnings thrown into a heap and burned.
By refusing to learn from history, we assign ourselves to the shelves of stupidity. Here we are again. And again. And again.
And again.
Emergence happens when we emerge through the past, transcending and including the key lessons.
This is one of the practices of wisdom.
Photo July 8th 2025, Article written July 78th 2025
