Apocalypse 2012

So I watched part of a show the other night about various prophecies that foretold the end of the world. Among the things discussed were the oracle at Delphi, the prophecies of Nostradamus, the I Ching, and the Mayan calendar.  Most of the show was dumb, (by which I mean overly speculative and reading way to much into the texts) but there was an interesting point that was brought up. We credit the ancient people with setting the ground work for modern civilization, but deny any place in our own cosmology for their belief in non-scientific ways of knowing. Having a background in anthropology, archaeology, and history it still suprises me how often we assume that our knowledge is greater than those people who came before us. I read an article in the NY times a year ago about how a pattern on a mosque used mathematics so advanced that our scholars only figured it out a few years ago.

The people in the past were not any less smart then we are now, but working with different information and with a different lens for sifting through the information that they had.

This ties into a problem I have with a lot of adults, and treating kids like they are stupid. I remember offering up ideas as a child and getting derided solely on the basis of my youth. No I am not saying that my ideas were great, or even right, but if they weren't right it was most likely because I lacked sufficient information to come to a "correct" conclusion. Now that I am an adult I get all sorts of people to listen to me, but my thought process hasn't changed much if at all from when I was younger.

I guess that the point of this is that maybe the ancients (or kids) have a lot more to offer then we really give them credit for. Being adults we are indoctrinated by culture and educational disciplines to see things in a certain way and ignore other potentially valid information. Maybe if we take a step away from what is "appropriate" we will better understand our world.