Starvin Larry

Years ago, I saw the movie Timeline, itself an adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel of the same name, and I was struck by one very profound insight in the otherwise atrocious film. Superior knowledge is not superior intelligence. Or put more appropriately: our predecessors were not morons.

In the film (and, I presume, the book as well), a band of time travelers wind up stuck in 14th century France, and find that all of their supposedly superior knowledge is useless. Only one man manages to utilize his future knowledge effectively at all, and that only gains him employ (quasi-slavery, really) as a weapons designer for a warlord. Think for a moment what you would really do if you were cast into the 14th century and left to fend for yourself. How much of what you know would be useful at all? Could you even survive?

Read the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and try to come away from it with the notion that you’re a smarter man than he. And even where the ancients were demonstrably wrong, ask yourself very carefully if you, having been brought up in their time, would have done any better.

Contrary to the common belief that mankind is locked in an endlessly progressive trajectory, where each day humanity’s collective wisdom ever-increases, I suspect it has actually done the opposite.

Read the whole thing  @ Declination  here