One generation’s wisdom is the next generation’s folly.
Do we have any idea where we are and where we’re going? We do not. No one as 2020 dawned could have foreseen where we are as 2021 dawns. Tomorrow is no less obscure, next year more so, the next generation hopelessly so. Bring the best minds to bear on the problems that beset us and we’ll hear great thoughts, credits to the thinking capacity of our species — and yet no less likely, for all the knowledge and intelligence that went into them, to be mocked by time. How many of our best thoughts today will seem childish nonsense to our near (never mind distant) descendants?
Shukan Gendai magazine (Dec. 29–Jan. 2) presents two vivid examples — one demographic, one nuclear.