“Life can only be understood backwards; but must be lived forwards.” - Soren Kierkegaard
Not the deepest philosophical insight but damn if this isn’t some incredible comic panel construction.
I’ve heard this same concept expressed as, “we walk backwards into the future”. We can’t see what’s coming, only what has happened. (We can predict what’s coming based on what’s happened, but there’s always uncertainty.)
And I’m pretty sure the artist is Tom Gauld, who does some really neat science/philosophy strips
Although a cool comic strip I believe this to be a fallacy. Here‘s an excerpt from a summary of the book „Creativity Inc“, which has a lot more insights like these:
Our view of the past, in fact, is hardly clearer than our view of the future. While we know more about a past event than a future one, our understanding of the factors that shaped it is severely limited.
“We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there,” as Mark Twain once said, “lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again—and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.”
https://arafatm.com/mba/creativity-inc
Basically you will never understand why something happened only that it happened. Changing the probable reasons of an event can have more unwanted side effects. Also the influence of oneself is often more limited than we think.
I’m pretty sure I still understand many past events in the chronological order
Nah.
World War 2 started with the surrender of the Axis powers and nuking of Japan.
It ended when Germany invaded Poland.
