End of History Illusion
I was watching an old Vsauce video where Michael brings up the end of history illusion. In a nutshell, people generally believe that their present, is their forever. That they’re done changing and the person they are now, their likes and dislikes, will all be the same for the rest of their lives. But clearly that’s not true. Just think about how you were five or ten years ago, and how drastically different you were then. Odds are, you’ll be that different in five or ten more years. Now, I’m only twenty-three so ten years ago I was in middle school... so yeah, the changes are more drastic, but the principle still applies.
I think it’s the same reason we don’t see drastic differences in our appearances when we look in the mirror. I think we spend too much time with ourselves. We don't notice small little changes because they happen so gradually. I think I read once that it takes seven years for all the cells in your body to be replaced with new ones. So, you're a whole new you.
This also reminds me of a paradox. This paradox was first explained to me in a VERY HARD TO FIND video by Dan Brown (pogobat). It’s called the Ship of Theseus. It’s a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. So after the seven years it takes to replace all our cells, are we still us?
But I got a little off topic. I made this post because the End of History illusion is so comforting to me. Right now, I’m generally happy, but sometimes I get unreasonably worried that this is it. It’s probably because, for the first time in a long time, my life is slowing down. For most of my life, I’ve been a student in the American education system, and with that comes a pretty strict schedule. Grade K-12 took up most of my life, and then I went straight to a four year college. My life up until recently has been very preordained. Go to school, be a student, break in the summer. A great deal of my life was determined by powers higher than me. So when I finally got out of college, the End of History illusion hit me hard. To put it like Jack Nicholson, “what if this is as good as it gets?”
I guess what I’m trying to say is, this likely isn’t as good as it gets. I don’t think there are really superlatives in life, because it keeps going until it stops. There’s always potential for things to get better or worse and I guess that’s kind of comforting.
