While flipping through the channels after work yesterday I made my way over to VH-1 and found one of their new "I Love the 80s" programs. Seeing shows like that is quite frustrating. They are symptomatic of a very damaging sort of historicism, akin to the blind sight of the Enlightenment. Just as Enlightenment thinkers "dared to know" and attempted to shake off the shackles of old prejudice that they might see the world for what it really is (when in fact their actions were like a cataract that slowly develops till it chokes out all rays of light), these current attempts at understanding the past are doomed to fail. Shows like "I Love the 80s" give us two options for understanding the past: it is either a laughable blunder to be treated as a kitschy plaything and ultimately forgotten, and even rebelled against; or it is an iconic exemplar viewed through the dim light of romanticism, a "classic" to be forever reproduced.

For the sake of grounding myself in examples while sticking to the VH-1 theme, I'll stick to music. A favorite example of forgettable musical is 80s hair metal. That label of forgettableness proved destructive; its label as a fad only prompted later fads. Hair metal prompted the flannel and whininess that was grunge and Generation X. Of course that all proved short lived, fashion- and music-wise.

On the flip-side there's this annoying recent 70s wave of music (the White Stripes and the Vines and other stuff I can't stand). It's so dreadfully imitative.

It is this lack of understanding of history as a continuum and our own times and selves and points sliding along the line that is behind our poor treatment of the elderly and other such inter-generational problems.

I'm presently finishing up the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy and will soon move to Gadamer's Truth and Method. The Old Oligarch sent me a few chapters last summer which I read and enjoyed, but now feel like tackling the whole thing.

So when am I going to make time to study for the LSATs?