Becoming - Part I

Bearing in mind that society is always changing, it seems that looking back in history (and pre-history, and as far as we can look) we identify periods of relatively stable character and periods of substantive change. In general, as it seems obvious, the closer in time to the present and the better the record keeping, the higher the narrative resolution over the time axis. However, different cultures have different approaches to the past, different historiographies. Mythology can be considered – not exclusively – a particular approach to the past, for instance. Overall, it seems there is a global convergence to a historiography based on digital technology, the last installment of the art of memory that found its stability through the development of syntactic language and consciousness.

We go from the evolution of the hominids to the successful adoption of language, from domestication and civilization to the end of the Bronze Age, and focusing on Western history we see the transformation of the Greek civilization between the 8th and 5th century BCE as pivotal to where we are now. The resolution is then higher, the records kept in large quantities – we also come closer to the present in time – a particular historiography (from Herodotus and Thucydides to Virgil and Procopius, with all their differences) converging to our current narrative. And certainly history has been re-written every now and then, in broad strokes – for instance during the Renaissance with the classical antiquity revival, and later during the Greek revival of the 18th and 19th centuries – and in subtle strokes too. Nothing is simple but we see our personhood through a simplified narrative.

Where are we now? Is perhaps the instauration of a planetary community (more than a global civilization) the truly new event of the current times? Does the technologies that brought that about take us to a different view of the world and ourselves? What is this world, and how do we fit in it?