The Past is a Permanent Dimension of Human Consciousness and Values

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Past is a Permanent Dimension of Human Consciousness and Values

 

The past is an ever-present part of human consciousness and values in various spheres - personal, societal, state and foreign policy. In this article, I'll attempt to examine its influence over our thinking and actions today.

 

Understanding our past can help us avoid reliving traumatic experiences and strike a balance between despair and utopianism.

 

Personal

 

The past is an ever-present element of human consciousness and values, providing input values upon which to base future plans and analyses. If one performed poorly in previous exams, their mistakes can help inform decision making for new decisions; ultimately helping improve both present and future performances.

 

Human values are deeply ingrained within us, making them primitive and difficult to change; but also powerful sources of stability both individually and for societies as a whole. Anthropologists such as Dorothy Lee have conducted extensive studies of food gathering practices among the Arapesh tribe of New Guinea, finding their organizational methods, while ineffective from a food production viewpoint, were highly successful at imparting values into everyday lives.

 

Milton Rokeach and his balanced time perspective is an important modern contribution to the theory of personal values, asserting that people possess thousands of attitudes toward certain objects or situations, but only few dozen instrumental and terminal values which are linked cognitively with one another and organized hierarchically along a central-peripheral dimension.

 

Society

 

The past is an integral component of human consciousness and society as a whole, playing an essential role in shaping institutions, values and other elements that shape social life. Even the most innovative societies must have some sense of their pasts due to living alongside those older than themselves; its presence can take various forms across time and societies.

 

One of the fundamental aspects of understanding our past is chronology or at least an image of chronological history. Chronology itself is built into language: most societies have words for time and most languages have verbs to express this idea of movement from one point to the next. Even secularised societies will have mythologies which portray this transition over time.

 

An important aspect of understanding our past is continuity and tradition. Society recognizes both the necessity for change as well as the importance of keeping some things constant, so the memory of heroic past events such as rebellious peasants, English soldiers or French revolutionaries helps legitimize attempts at adapting to it today. Schools frequently include Boadicea, Vercingetorix King Alfred or Joan of Arc in their curriculum to legitimize attempts at adapting, while many people make visiting historical places a hobby.

 

At some point in society's development, looking backwards to help forecast the future is essential and serves a variety of functions - for instance an engineer might look backwards to learn from mistakes made previously and examine her/his mistakes from prior exams to improve preparation in subsequent ones. But when this practice no longer provides accurate predictors of the future and becomes nothing but nostalgic sentimentality it becomes irrelevant as an instrument to predict it.

 

State

 

As individuals and as members of society, it is vitally important that we understand how the past shapes both our values and consciousness. Unfortunately, interpretations of history differ greatly between individuals, often depending on identities such as religion, caste or culture - often leading to differences in behavior and beliefs on these basis alone. This often creates hostilities among individuals as well as hinders society's progress by restricting innovation while creating an atmosphere of conservatism. In this essay by the author suggests a better way of looking at history: viewing it as permanent dimensions of consciousness and values rather than temporary effects on individual consciousness or values.

The term "state" encompasses an expansive set of political institutions, from small gatherings of settlers (e.g., clan) to the largest nation states currently operating worldwide. It comes from Latin status meaning "condition, circumstance," or "to stand". While modern states emerged over prehistory from various forms of organization more common during prehistoric periods, they eventually outshone all others forms and ultimately replaced most alternative forms as more predominant political institutions on Earth's prehistory timelines.

 

A state is a social formation that serves as a framework of rules for economic production and governance across a territory. It is an intricate hierarchical structure with complex layers that provides institutionalized structures for exploiting human resources - it may cause war, violence and unrest, yet at other times serve to promote peace, cooperation and stability in its territory.

 

Rousseau proposed in the 19th century that states should be founded upon the will and moral standards of their citizens; on the other hand, Jeremy Bentham believed they should only function within internal politics and should remain limited and limited in scope. Both these theories had significant ramifications on state development.

 

Some channeled beings believe that souls experience multiple lifetimes in lower dimensions before arriving on Earth to experience 3D life. These experiences may serve as opportunities for learning and knowledge acquisition before moving on to higher densities of consciousness; spiritual people hope for such experiences during their lives.

 

Foreign Policy

 

Foreign policy decisions are determined by past experiences and decisions made, whether these experiences belong to them personally or are from past ancestors and cultures passed down over history.

 

Example: Mistakes made during past examinations teach individuals not to repeat them in future exams. Weather data also aid farmers in preparing for monsoon season.

 

Recently, governments had been known for keeping their foreign policies confidential; as access to government records became easier, research into foreign policy rapidly progressed into an academic discipline with many universities now offering graduate and post-graduate courses on it; think tanks also exist dedicated to studying it - one such think tank being the Council on Foreign Relations of the US.