23 November 2011

An altered sense of perspective

"The common belief that we gain ‘historical perspective’ with increasing distance seems to me to utterly misrepresent the actual situation. What we gain is merely confidence in generalization that we would never dare to make if we had access to the real wealth of contemporary evidence."
- Otto Neugebauer

1 comment:

Bill Wolfe said...

David - here is a strong challenge to your quote - a view I agree with:

During the final century of the Roman Empire, it was common for emperors to deny that their civilization was in decline. Only with the perspective of history can we see that the emperors were wrong, that the empire was failing, and that the Roman people were unwilling or unable to change their way of life before it was too late. The same, says Morris Berman, is true of twenty-first century America. The nation and its empire are in decline and nothing can be done to reverse their course. How did this come to be?"

from book jacket of "Why America Failed" by Morris Berman