I mean, people kinda are aware of it? We all know our grandparents are old, and that’s just two generations— knowing your great grandparents is considered a rare honor because of how old they must be, and that’s just three. So a long time spanning relatively few people isn’t really a shocking revelation, is it?
That’s also the weird thing about the “experienced” past.
When we think about what things were like “in the past”, we think of what they were like for the oldest people we know, and if we are lucky we get a couple stories from them about their parents or grandparents.
So for me, my experienced past ends in 1930.
The experienced past is the lense through which we see the whole past, even though it’s such a tiny sliver of the actual past.
Remember this in this context: Whenever someone says “In the past X was always the case”, what they really mean was “For my grandparents X was the case”, and they likely don’t even realize that.
I mean, people kinda are aware of it? We all know our grandparents are old, and that’s just two generations— knowing your great grandparents is considered a rare honor because of how old they must be, and that’s just three. So a long time spanning relatively few people isn’t really a shocking revelation, is it?
I can tell my kids about their great-great grandparents.
That’s also the weird thing about the “experienced” past.
When we think about what things were like “in the past”, we think of what they were like for the oldest people we know, and if we are lucky we get a couple stories from them about their parents or grandparents.
So for me, my experienced past ends in 1930.
The experienced past is the lense through which we see the whole past, even though it’s such a tiny sliver of the actual past.
Remember this in this context: Whenever someone says “In the past X was always the case”, what they really mean was “For my grandparents X was the case”, and they likely don’t even realize that.