Collective Amnesia: Mistaking the World We Inherited for the World That Must Be

Social and political systems depend upon a peculiar combination of collective amnesia and suspended disbelief. We behave as though the world we inherited was inevitable, forgetting how recently much of it came into existence. Collective memory is selective, shaped by historical trauma, national mythology, imagined golden ages and narratives of progress. Alternative histories exist, but dominant accounts reinforce the institutions and relationships through which they are sustained. This becomes particularly conspicuous under authoritarian regimes, where history is presented as a necessary progression towards the existing political order. The more insistently a system declares its own inevitability, the more effort it expends excluding alternatives. Whether we choose to forget, are encouraged to, or simply inherit these narratives, the consequence is similar. We lose sight of how differently things once worked, and how differently they could work again.

None of our present social, political or economic arrangements is necessary, inevitable or demonstrably optimal. They are simply what happened. They emerge through stochastic dynamical processes involving countless possible material relationships and energetic configurations. Given sufficient time, free energy and opportunities for variation, organised complexity emerges and reproduces itself. Institutions sustain the dependencies through which they persist, while beliefs and identities reinforce one another. Even opposing political positions become mutually sustaining. Human agency, intervention and reform operate within these dynamics, not outside them. What appears optimal is frequently optimal only for preserving the relationships, dependencies and distributions of power that constitute the existing system, not for the people living within it or its long-term survival. Persistence is not evidence of merit.

Functioning within society requires surprisingly little understanding of how it came to exist. We learn its conventions, follow its routines and reproduce its expectations. Beyond sustaining a decent life, much of our activity becomes an endless pursuit of possessions, upgrades and manufactured desires. More things, newer things, better things, followed by another generation of things. Economic arrangements continually reproduce dissatisfaction as a condition of consumption, while social expectations make participation appear necessary. Recognising the contingency of these arrangements requires effort. Belief is easier. We mistake the demands of an inherited economic system for the necessities of existence itself.

Imagine if the daytime sky revealed the Milky Way, distant galaxies and immense galaxy clusters. Atmospheric scattering obscures the stars during daylight, while most galaxies remain beyond unaided human vision. But suppose the larger cosmic environment were visible throughout our lives. How differently would we understand our place in existence? Astronomical awareness guarantees neither wisdom nor benevolence. Civilisations with sophisticated astronomical traditions have also practised conquest and exploitation. The significance lies elsewhere. What we routinely experience shapes what we consider natural, while everything beyond that experience requires deliberate effort to comprehend. Our understanding of existence develops within the limits of what we encounter and learn to recognise.

In my own case, long periods of social isolation and alienation encouraged that effort. I began studying cosmology early in life, and that perspective has shaped much of my subsequent understanding. The observable Universe extends approximately 92 billion light-years across, contains hundreds of billions of galaxies and an estimated one septillion stars, a one followed by 24 zeros. Beyond the observable horizon, space may extend infinitely, although its extent remains unknown. Our civilisation occupies a fleeting interval within an unimaginably larger process. Cosmology provides no political programme, but it exposes the temporary character of arrangements we experience as permanent. The world we inherited is one historical configuration among countless possibilities. Recognising that distinction changes what we are prepared to question.

The cost of that perspective, in my experience, has been a diminished capacity for social accommodation. Belonging depends partly upon shared expectations and participation, while examining those expectations requires some distance from them. Social life entrains us into collective rhythms of belief and behaviour, making inherited arrangements appear natural through their continual reproduction. Critical understanding remains possible from within society, and isolation guarantees no special insight. Yet distance changes both what becomes visible and the possibilities of belonging. To appreciate the significance of history, one must, in some regard, cease to be entirely a party to its prevailing assumptions. There is something faintly absurd about a species capable of contemplating a potentially infinite Universe while remaining absorbed in acquiring possessions, defending temporary hierarchies and reproducing relationships that increasingly threaten its survival. The world we inherited is not the world that must be. It is simply the one we have become accustomed to sustaining.