The Renaissance
2024-01-09 12:05 The Renaissance
I rather feel like a crazy person when I’ve lost something. When, it’s obvious that it should be here, and it’s not here, and I truly have no idea where it went. Can you relate?
I’ve read a few interesting things about the Renaissance lately, a period in time more interesting than I had previously known. For example, there were great artists in Greece and Rome in -700 to 400 (BC to AD) whose techniques, such as those for making civilization, especially art, were forgotten for quite some time. It wasn’t until around 1500 that there was a push for rediscovery of these things, of how to do them, of what it meant to create again. Things like “how do we use pigment to make this paint” or “ how do we create from this stone a sculpture?” “How do we cast metal into interesting shapes (not just bells and canons and such)?” Can you imagine? _1000 years_ of a collective loss of ability to do things. Like, a society of humans, who forgot. The Bible talks about this occasionally — this idea of manuscripts being written, stored, and forgotten. Then rediscovered by some king decades or centuries later. I can’t even imagine what that must have felt like.
When watching historical content on the Chrysler Turbine car recently, this very idea is mentioned: we don’t know how to make this anymore. The car had very specifically sculpted turbine blades inside the engine, the whole thing cast and created with the expertise of hundreds of people working, engineering, together. And then, we burn the records, forget how to do it, and all we have left are the artifacts themselves.
Perhaps this is like a grandparent forgetting what it was like to be a parent. Or a person forgetting the lines of a play they were once in. Just scaled up. But it’s one thing (in my mind) for a single person to be able to do something once, and then not be able to do it. When a whole society, for a whole (rather large) period of time can’t remember how to do something, that feels quite different!
It reminds me that what we know how to do today, what we, all of us, are making today, and tomorrow, and yesterday, really is quite unique in the span of time. We, as a group, are a sort of fingerprint, on a hand that knows how to do some things, and has forgotten how to do others. Many of these things, we (as a group) only know how to do, because some of us have put in inordinate amounts of energy into studying how those specific things work. And once we are gone, if the next generation doesn’t put in that work, they don’t know how to do that thing anymore. Imagine an engineering team that knows how to write a language that then becomes obsolete in 10 years. When that team dies, retires, etc, the collective humanity, looses that skill. All of us are affected by the abilities of a few of us, and when those few go away, all of us are affected again. I sure hope we don’t need to know how to do that! Or, better, I sure hope the people left have an engine in place to remember how to do that when needed.
It matters more than we know, these things we choose to study, to focus on. Yes, of course it’s interesting to copywrite your way to fame with attention grabbing headlines, and text that supports ever important call to action on your website. And of course if you have a great body, or face, or smile, and you can create brand deals with companies to sell their products, you can earn a living with social media. But in so doing, you’re not doing something else. You’re putting your energy into that, and not something else. And the somethings we all put our energy into, as a group, really do matter.
