At this age, an artisan apprentice would leave the master's studio to live and craft works in solitude. The techniques and styles have changed, but a similar coming-of-age portrait is composed today; with a blurry perspective, we now approach our own blank canvasses. Yet still, like all novices before us, we are given only two paints to draw from: the past and present. For reasons to be illustrated, the present has become our generation's primary color. Now we only dabble in history.
A glance at the palette outlines the contrast between past and present. We notice the present enjoys a fuller tone, for the present is immediate, mainly material, and can be passively observed. The past, however, gives a less apparent hue: history is less accessible, more abstract and demands patience and imagination to be seen.
History is easily brushed aside on claims of irrelevance - the past being unnecessary, dead scrolls which cannot capture the vitality of today's world. More common is condescension - to discount the past as inferior. This sentiment signifies an innate skepticism toward those before us. Namely, we know things that weren't previously known and find it difficult to take seriously historical figures in hindsight of their limited knowledge.
Detailing this rough sketch, the millennials have a particular relationship with the past. For a generation so self-conscious of its place in history - What are we calling ourselves these days? - we have only had a shaky fling with the years before us.
If modernism paid humble homage to antiquity, our postmodernism is hyper-allusive and typically mocking of history. Often, we encounter history not from primary sources, but through mediums like South Park or Family Guy. Our first glimpse of the past is distorted through this ironic cultural prism; we then come to history with cynical expectations, having prevented ourselves from virginal discovery. Plus, the parodies of the past can be more entertaining than the sometimes dull reality of the original. Try watching The Seventh Seal after seeing Monty Python or a western after Blazing Saddles. I recently saw Stroszek, a film about a struggling immigrant who comes to despair in America. The famously disturbing final scenes and suicide are said to have had a Werther effect on some viewers. To me, the movie came off as a boring Borat.
History, then, no longer moves or informs, but serves as the material for our jokes. Shakespeare sucks, Hamlet's 'emo'; Homer, in today's sardonic memespeak, is EPIC.
Another strong current pulling us from the past is our education. High school curricula is regularly determined by benchmark standardized exams. In the humanities and social sciences, tested information covers a select period - neither an early age when we lack sufficient material or events too recent to be properly historicized - that is mainly from the Enlightenment to Vietnam. This, along with the rushed efforts of science and math to teach us certain skills, causes a displaced curriculum. We are not taught disciplines from their origin, so do not understand how fields began and cannot trace the common lineage of academic departments. Nor is our education extended to the present, thus we strain to see the relevance of knowledge in our everyday lives. We can rotate triangles but do not know Euclid; we plug and chug calculus but are ignorant of Newton. Teachers hand us 19th-century novels and wonder why we cannot relate to literature. Most of us could better explain the history and effects of the T-Model and television than the computer or Internet. Our schooling prepares us to do a host of things without explanation; hence it is no surprise that we are apathetic and puzzled about the beauty and importance of learning. There is a disconnect between first causes and final effects; we are treading water in the sea of time. Education should fill, not worsen, this disconnect.
By rule, an article about our generation must cite the Internet. The speed of the Internet has instilled in us a profound impatience. We do not want news as it arrives, but before it happens; we do not demand the present but the future. Our eager anticipation masks a quiet fatalism: Tomorrow seems already over, dismissed before it begins. Refresh the page and clear the history.
Time delivers a newborn instant and we throw the birthday party. "Live in the moment," we cheer, calling for an unending celebration of ourselves and the present. In a fit of Hegelian hubris, our age - like ages before us - has declared that we are the end of history. But history ends only when we have ceased to remember it.
Aaron Eisen is a senior associate editor for The Cavalier Daily. He is columns appear Wednesdays.
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