Living In The Past Poem by David Welch

I've heard people say it online,
"Stop living in the past,
don't you know it's the current year,
you've got to catch up fast."
Most often said by Marxist types,
which just seems strange to me,
since they follow ideas now aged
nearly two centuries.
And while they try to dress it up
in all sorts of new coats,
it's still a ruthless, old idea
that slaughtered countless folk.
On top of that the arrogance
That goes with such a phrase…
just strikes me as ridiculous,
in a hubristic way.
"Stop living in the past, "they cry,
but I will plainly tell
that all humans live in ‘the past, '
and can live nowhere else!

First off, there is the obvious,
the brain's reaction speed,
that millionth of a second when
it translates what eyes see,
So that that world around you now
is not the present, no,
what you see happened a millionth
of a second ago.
That means that all you see and sense
is very recent past,
present gone before detected,
it all happens that fast.
Does present even exist though?
It you look at it close,
all units of time get smaller,
no end to that, you know.
By the time you can even think,
the moment is long gone,
so all cognitions is past-tense,
you can't say that I'm wrong.

Lift it up to a larger scale,
knowledge is history,
since any subject we've learned on
happened previously.
Any tech that you've ever used
had to be made, produced,
any knowledge that's written down
someone already knew.
All these things happened in the past,
it contains everything,
without these ideas we can't live,
no past, no existing.
The past contains all that we've learned,
what works and what does now,
when someone laughs at it I know
their brain is full of rot,
since every argument we have,
the damn language itself,
all are structured on the past,
and it is there we dwell.
All the ideas that have shaped us,
the stories we enjoy,
the clothes you wear, that damn cell phone,
jobs in which we're employed,
the human nature we've evolved,
stubborn and unchanging,
means no one can escape ‘the past, '
it's endless cycling…

Even those who see ‘the future, '
will see it in past terms,
since the past is the reference from
which all mankind must learn.
That grand, utopian future
of which so many dream,
is defined by what it escapes:
a past brutal and mean.
It's shaped by what it doesn't have,
compared to ages gone,
a vision based on past eras
stripped of all that went wrong.
And the sad thing of such visions,
I think it must be said,
is how quickly the all look stale,
how soon they look dated.
Look back on all the old scifi
from back in the fifties,
the future they imagined them
now seems quaint history.

It all seems such a waste of time,
trying to think like that,
much better to just see the truth
and lessons from the past.
The endless wisdom that was gleaned,
just waiting to be used,
and half the time we learn from it
we create something new.
Remember that the Renaissance
was folks looking at Greece,
thinking that they could learn from it,
soon after culture peaked.
Remember the Founding Fathers
we're looking back at Rome,
a republic, no need for king,
from that so much has grown.
The truth is undeniable,
so long as we may last,
every single human alive
is living in the past.