Does the Past Matter?

Does the past matter?  Before  attempting to answer this question let us first consider what it may mean. Which past? Whose past? -The historical past? The personal past?  What is meant by matter? Many a philosopher and historian has sweated over this conundrum.  Dare I then presume to answer what they have only dared to ask? I suppose the question is essentially asking; is the past relevant. But to what and to whom? This is vague. Vague questions beget vague answers. But let me try!

For many years historians took a mechanistic view of history (the past). So did the Church: mess up and you go to hell. The Eastern ideologies were a little more kind with their concept of karma, but the mathematical certitude of cause and effect was central to their ideology: you reap what you sow.

On the surface of things this mechanical attitude seems the simplest course to take. To every event (the present) there is a cause (the past) and from every cause there follows a consequence (the future). Find out the causes of events and you may think you have found out history and perhaps even the future. But Egon Friedell replies to this:

 “In history, we consider causes are realised consequences - consequences of causes that lie beyond history. The true course of history does not consist of events.”  (Italics mine)

So does the past affect the future? George Mccauly Travelyn also explored this question when he stated,

“History repeats itself”  and  “history never repeats itself,  are about equally true ..... we never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.”

So the task is endless. To question whether a particular concept, or cause matters, seems  an infinite task, each answer resulting in another question,  and another and another. To continually question questions is to become entrenched in a quagmire of tedious intellectualism.
Darwin held the mechanistic view and so did Freud. The latter believed that the events of early childhood mould our personalities. Surely this is a prime example of the past effecting the future. On a more noticeable level, it is surely clear that the events of  today will in some way determine the outcome of tomorrow.  

If I break a leg today I wont be able to walk tomorrow.  This example, simplistic as it is, shows the possible effects of the past on the future.  This, on one level, does imply that the past matters as it is certainly relevant in determining the future and the present.
However, this way of thinking only seems to work on a trivial level. It does not address the great questions of being.

But this mechanistic Newtonian universe of cause and effect no longer holds. Quantum mechanics now informs us that things can happen without a cause and some physicists are once more looking for a ghost in the machine. Physics seems to again be becoming a branch of theology. 

And the mystics are saying, “I told you so all along!”
If considered in its deepest existential sense, the past (whether historical or personal) can only matter if the future matters. Science cannot answer this. If the consummation or end of history has no meaning, if it ends with a whimper, as Eliot may have thought, then all that has gone before must also be equally meaningless. “All is vanity and vexation of spirit”, saith the unhappy preacher of Ecclesiastes.

So, at the micro level (the personal and historical level) the past only matters at a trivial level of cause and effect.  What we need to ask is at the cosmic, mystic and macro level; that is, can we see any meaning (anything that matters) in the really big picture?

 My persuasion is that if meaning is not inherent in the universe we then have to create it for ourselves. The psychologist Victor Frankl (author of The will to Meaning) would likely agree with this. But here is a paradox: if we have to create the meaning of life for ourselves and are successful in it, and as we are undoubtedly a part of the universe, then it must logically follow that the universe has meaning.

I think that this is a very personal thing and not something for science or even philosophy. But until I am better informed I will continue to follow Tennyson’s advice, “Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, and cling to faith beyond the forms of faith”.

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