What with the pandemic and all I’ve been in something of a reflective mood this Christmas season. One diversion has been an almost compulsive reading of Robertson Davies’ 1982 book,The Rebel Angels, which is the first instalment in his Cornish Trilogy. One passage that really struck home was this statement by Hollier during his attempt to explain to Madame Laoutaro what he did for a living:
I am an historian, not of wars or governments, not of art or science - at least not science as people think of it now - but of beliefs. I try to recapture not simply the fact that people at one time believed something-or-other, but the reasons and the logic behind their belief. It doesn’t matter if the belief was wrong, or seems wrong to us today: it is the fact of the belief that concerns me. You see, I don’t think people are foolish and believe wholly stupid things; they may believe what is untrue, but they have a need to believe the untruth - it fills a gap in the fabric of what they want to know, or think they ought to know. We often throw such beliefs aside without having truly understood them. If an army is approaching on foot nowadays, the information reaches us by radio, or perhaps by army telephone; but long ago every army had men who could hear the approach of an enemy by putting their heads to the ground. That wouldn’t do now, because armies move faster, and we attack them before we can see them, but it worked very well for several thousand years. That is a simple example; I don’t want to bore you with complexities. But the kind of sensitivity that made it possible for a man to hear an army marching several miles away without any kind of artificial aid has almost disappeared from the earth. The recognition of oneself as part of nature, and reliance on natural things, are disappearing for hundreds of millions of people who do not know that anything is being lost. I am not digging into such things because I think the old ways are necessarily better than the new ways, but I think there may be some of the old ways that we would be wise to look into before all knowledge of them disappears from the earth - the knowledge and the kind of thinking that lay behind it.
I too like to seek out knowledge about the roots of things and ideas, wondering if anything important has been lost or sidetracked. If you’re a longtime reader here, you know I have something of an obsession about rambling around the roots of model railroading’s hidden history. And it’s not just looking for model railroading’s obscured and ignored beginnings, I find myself applying the same mindset to other areas. I think the first serious occurrence was when I was in school studying aerodynamics. The library had what I think was a complete set of NACA (NASA’s predecessor) reports stretching back to the late 1910s (?). I was obsessed with trying to read them all to figure out how aerodynamic thinking came to be what it was, and maybe find out if anything was lost. I can see myself continuing my digs into the dusty corners of model railroading’s roots - as well as lots of other areas - in 2021 with this Davies sentence in mind: I am not digging into such things because I think the old ways are necessarily better than the new ways, but I think there may be some of the old ways that we would be wise to look into before all knowledge of them disappears …
This is the essence of good Permaculture design - it embraces appropriate technology while drawing on deep, inherited knowledge of natural systems, often tied closely to the people that have inhabited a place for generations. There is a striving to learn the ancient ways not because they were better, but because they may hold the key to a successful future treading lightly on this planet.
ReplyDeleteI have not necessarily applied this filter to model railroading, but perhaps there is some benefit here yet undiscovered. Hmmm... Good thoughts for a cold Winter's night!
I admit my model railroading interpretation to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and certainly doesn't relate to how the statement is played out in the book. But, I think it does apply to a lot of areas of human activity, especially various types of traditional crafts.
DeleteStill, there's more than a little truth to the notion of knowledge and skill being lost to time. The image of the soldier with his ear to the ground to hear the approaching army calls to mind the stories my grandfather told me from his days as a car knocker on the N&W. Such on-the-ground knowledge (no pun intended) can inform our choices as modelers in light of how the trains were run but also the environment surrounding them and the trains themselves. As someone modeling a freelanced railroad set in the 1920s, I am palpably aware that there's probably an ocean of knowledge I'll never even know exists.
DeleteI continue to be surprised that the more I look into model railroading of the past, the more interesting things and methods I find. Some, like using asbestos for scenery, aren't recommended anymore, but others, like the so-called 'progression modelling' methods still produce quite respectable model buildings, but that is more-or-less gone from modern discussions (although I admit that there's lots going on I'm not aware of).
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