March 28, 2024
Past and Future
The idea of a better past pervades our culture to such an extent that innovative
movements are almost always presented as a return to the past: from medieval
religious movements (return to evangelical times) to the Renaissance, to the
neoclassicism of the French Revolution, to our Risorgimento. It could be said
that only at the beginning of the 20th century did people truly think about the
future as something new (I recall the Futurists, the early days of Fascism,
communism especially in the Far East), and the new almost becomes synonymous
with better.