Looking Back

February 22, 2008, 4:00 pm; posted by
Filed under Articles, Featured, Steve  | 1 Comment

Do you have a desire to dig up the Holy Land in search of artifacts from Biblical times? It can happen; there are at least a few organizations willing to take people as inept as you and me along to the ruins of 2nd-century Roman inns, and let us flail about in the dirt in search of priceless buried treasure. It works, too. Past visitors have uncovered royal seals, an ancient marriage contract — and tons of pottery.

Pottery, say the archaeologists, is “the plastic of the ancient world. It’s everywhere, and it’s impossible to destroy.”

When I first read this description, it reminded me of how hard it is to identify what will survive beyond our years in this world — and how ignorant we are of the everyday lives of those who have gone before us. For all our archaeological efforts and imaginative estimations, you and I can never — EVER — know even remotely what it was like to wake up and live as king or servant in the house of David of Jerusalem. Or Henry VIII of London. Or (as our oldest sadly slip away) Woodrow Wilson of Washington, leader during the first World War.

One of the most important recordings in the history of radio was made by Washington, DC station WJSV in September 1939. Before the era of audiotape, the station simply recorded its entire broadcast day. 18 full hours of radio, heard exactly as they were that fall day.

Part of the draw of this material is how unique it is. You can read books about World War II; you can fortunately still talk to those who lived through it; you can try to grasp and understand it in your mind. But when you close your eyes and listen to this radio station, you are transported 70 years back in time. In one small yet fascinating way, this recording recreates the experience of what it was like to live in America in 1939. We think that if we had more — a diary of life in historic times, a video of our grandparents’ first Christmas together — we might come to understand the past, to overcome the great gulf fixed by death.

These days, we have videotape and audiotape in countless formats, computers and cameras that save more information about us than we will ever know. Almost nothing disappears. Vast stores of data on almost anyone is available at the click of a mouse. The ephemera of our civilization stacks up around us, fills up our hard drives like shards of pottery on the floor of a Mediterranean cave.

My father was born in the second half of the last century, and yet the records I have seen of his childhood are only sparse pictures and silent videos. My children will have access to exponentially more information about me — and their lives, if representative of this generation, will be nearly transparent, at least to those they choose to trust.

WJSV’s tape and the royal seals of Israel gain value because they are scarce. Even an otherwise unremarkable letter, after centuries and the decay of all its kin, becomes a treasure. But self-reflection is the modern pottery. No one will ever have to wonder how a teenager of the 21st century felt, and I think, on balance, that this is probably a bad thing. What can be learned from the spoiled and self-absorbed, who treat the most amazing development in human history as nothing more than another way to draw attention to themselves? Just because the Internet gives you the opportunity to speak to the world doesn’t mean you are worthy to be heard.

I believe that the archaeologists of our future, if they even bother to unearth millions of self-centered blogs and Facebook pages overloaded with the permanence of our cultural effluvia, might take, as their most valuable lesson, a clearer understanding of the ancient Hebrew teacher.

“There is nothing new under the sun.”


Comments

1 Comment to “Looking Back”

  1. Job on February 24th, 2008 5:22 pm

    An admitted lover of Ecclesiastes, this is easily the finest thing I’ve ever read on Bweinh…

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