Presentism: Why Seeing the Past Through Modern Eyes Is a Dangerous Game

Photo by Philip Swinburn on Unsplash

Presentism. The present twisting its grubby fingers into the past, making it into something it never was, something it never could be.

It’s like putting today’s cheap cologne on a dead man’s shirt and pretending it smells like roses. The problem with this is that the past doesn’t give a damn about your modern sensibilities, your moral compass, or your trendy ideas.

It was messy. It was brutal. It was the past. It wasn’t meant to serve you, or your “enlightened” opinions. Yet, there we are, time and again, shoving our present-day bullshit onto centuries of history like it’s a used car we’re trying to sell to the highest bidder.

Historians have been screaming about this for ages. They call it presentism, and it’s one of the deadliest sins of historical thinking.

When you project your modern-day values, opinions, and frustrations onto events, people, and cultures that existed long before you were born, you’re making an intellectual chaos.

The Anachronistic Disease: Distorting History to Fit Our Agenda

Presentism, in its simplest form, is when we look at the past and say, “Well, they should’ve known better.”

We project our 21st-century moral values, ethics, and assumptions onto people who lived in completely different contexts.

We think of them like they were just like us, only in different clothes, as if we can relate to them on some cosmic level.

We can’t. They were different. They thought differently. They had different motivations, different fears, different desires. But it’s easier for us to rewrite history to match our beliefs.

It’s easier to look at ancient civilizations, old wars, or long-dead thinkers and say, “Oh, if only they had done what we would do today.”

Let’s talk about a great example of presentism gone wrong: Noel Perrin’s Giving Up the Gun. Perrin wrote about how Edo-era Japan supposedly gave up firearms in favor of swords and honor-bound samurai ideals—this was his analogy to nuclear disarmament.

A noble thought, no doubt. But it’s also a tragic, dangerous misinterpretation of history. Perrin’s whole thesis is based on presentist assumptions, the kind of assumptions that make historians want to throw their books in the trash.

Here’s the truth: during the Edo period, guns were alive and well. They weren’t the toys we see in modern action movies.

People used them in war, sure, but they also used them for hunting, for defense. The Japanese didn’t “choose” to put down their guns in favor of swords—they just didn’t need them in a long-lasting period of peace.

But when war came again, guns were back. The idea that Edo Japan was a land of samurai ideals and sword-fighting honor, with a refusal to touch the deadly weapons of modernity, is just plain false. It’s an image created long after the fact by romanticized notions of what Japan should have been.

That’s what presentism does: it picks and chooses what it wants from the past and ignores the rest.

It’s like looking at an old photograph and saying, “Well, they must have all been happier back then, right?”

Wrong. History is too damn complicated for that.

The Poison of Intellectual Egotism: We Think We Know It All

This is where it gets ugly, like something that makes you question your existence in the quiet of a dark room.

Presentism is dangerous because it’s a form of intellectual egotism. It’s not just a flaw—it’s a disease. When we look at the past and impose our values on it, we’re saying that our views are the final word. That we know best. But you know what? We don’t.

It’s easy to think we’ve got it all figured out in the modern age. We have smartphones, the Internet, and enough fast food to kill a small nation. We think we’ve got wisdom. We think our ideas are the pinnacle of human thought.

But history? History is full of mistakes, chaos, and events that make no sense to us. People back then didn’t think like we do.

They didn’t operate on our moral code, or political landscape, or emotional framework. But presentism forces us to believe that they should have. We get comfortable in our knowledge and we let our modern world cloud our judgment of the past.

But history isn’t a game we can win with a few clever tricks. And here’s the truth: when you make the past fit your narrative, you lose. You lose the chance to learn, to grow, and to understand the real intricacies of human experience.

The Search for Meaning in History

Let’s pause for a moment and dive into the pit of nihilism. You know, that abyss that stares back at you when you ask the big questions and the universe just shrugs? It’s all meaningless, right?

History’s meaningless. The future is meaningless. What’s the point of even understanding the past when, in the grand scheme of things, none of it really matters?

Presentism is born from this nihilistic void. We cling to it because it’s easier than facing the terrifying truth that history isn’t something we can control.

It’s not a story we’re telling—it’s a mess of actions, decisions, and outcomes that we’ll never fully understand.

The people of the past had their own reasons for doing what they did, and they weren’t trying to fit into our shiny modern box. They didn’t give a damn about our social justice movements or our tech revolutions.

And that’s uncomfortable, isn’t it? To realize that the past doesn’t owe us anything? It doesn’t care about our struggles.

Teaching a Kid: Breaking It Down

Alright, kid, here’s the deal. You know how you like to play with action figures, right? Well, imagine you have a really old toy, like a soldier from 100 years ago.

Now, let’s say you start dressing him in clothes from your time, like a hoodie and some sneakers. You give him a skateboard and a phone. You start saying, “Look! This is how he looked back then! Cool, right?”

But here’s the thing: that soldier didn’t live in your time. He didn’t have a skateboard or a phone. He lived in a different world, with different problems. You can’t just slap your world onto him and pretend he was one of us. That’s presentism. When we look at the past and say, “Hey, they should have been like us,” we’re doing the same thing.

History’s a different world, with its own rules, and trying to make it fit ours is a fool’s game.

Presentism and the Silent Condemnation of the Past’s “Stupidity”

You ever get the feeling that the more we think we know, the dumber the past gets?

You read about ancient civilizations, and you can practically hear the sneers. “Oh, look at these idiots. They didn’t have our fancy smartphones and air conditioning. How did they even manage?”

It’s the arrogance of presentism—this smug, self-satisfied attitude that our time is the pinnacle of human achievement and that everyone before us was a bunch of knuckle-dragging, toothless apes. The irony of it is thick enough to choke on.

But here’s the thing: ancient people weren’t stupid. In fact, they were some of the smartest bastards to ever walk the Earth.

They didn’t have the luxuries we take for granted, sure. No cars, no electricity, no Netflix. But you know what they did have? Creativity, innovation, and the ability to get shit done with their own two hands.

That’s what gets me. We dismiss the people of the past, not because they weren’t capable, but because we can’t wrap our heads around the methods they used.

Sure, today we’ve got machines, power tools, all the fancy gadgets. But that doesn’t mean ancient people were any less smart. They had their own ways of building things, creating things, surviving in a world we can barely even imagine. The tools they used were different, sure, but effective as hell.

You ever see how a hand-operated lathe works? Yeah, you probably haven’t.

But let me tell you—one guy with a hand-powered lathe can produce more than you think. So let’s stop assuming that every great feat of history must have been the result of some magical, otherworldly force.

It’s not always about machines and power tools. Sometimes it’s about human will and resourcefulness. We’re too damn quick to dismiss it all as “impossible.” Ancient people had the patience and skill to figure things out that we can’t even comprehend anymore. And that’s where the real tragedy lies—our failure to recognize how much smarter they were than we think.

You ever try to carve a piece of stone with just a hammer and chisel? Go ahead, give it a try. It’ll humble you real fast. People back then didn’t have the convenience of power tools, but they had something more valuable: a clear understanding of how to make the most of what they had. That’s something we could all learn from.

But instead of respecting the past, we dismiss it.

We call it backward, primitive. And what’s worse, we act like we’ve got it all figured out. It’s a sad reflection of how far we’ve strayed from the real human experience.

It’s time we stop dismissing the past as stupid. They weren’t dumb. They were just different. And that difference? That’s something we should be celebrating, not mocking.

The Opposition

Now, there are voices out there—people who understand that history is far messier than we think. They get that imposing modern views on the past is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Here are some folks who challenge presentism:

NameWork / InfluenceStance on Presentism
Friedrich NietzscheBeyond Good and EvilArgued that we should see history without the modern moral lens; history is full of chaos and contradiction.
Michel FoucaultThe Archaeology of KnowledgeAdvocated for understanding history through its own context, not by applying our own moral judgments.
Quentin TarantinoInglourious BasterdsTwisted history to create a new narrative, but did so knowingly, acknowledging that history isn’t neat or simple.
Yuval Noah HarariSapiens: A Brief History of HumankindEmphasized the complexity of history and warned against oversimplification or presentist interpretations.

These thinkers refuse to let us escape the truth: history doesn’t fit into our neat boxes.

We have to struggle with it. We have to dig deeper, past our own desires and assumptions, to understand what really happened.

The Scientific Explanation: Why It Doesn’t Work

Let’s throw in some science, because why not? Neuroscience tells us that our brains are wired to make sense of things.

We build stories, narratives, and interpretations. It’s how we survive. But we can’t just apply our modern, Western brain chemistry to people from 1000 years ago. They didn’t think like we do.

They didn’t have our experiences, our values, or our fears. Their brains were shaped by different things—different threats, different landscapes, different ways of thinking.

Presentism ignores this. It’s like trying to fit a square brain into a round head. It doesn’t work.

Final Words

Where does this leave us?

Here’s the cold, hard truth: presentism is tempting, it’s easy. It lets us twist history to fit our fragile worldview.

But it’s also dangerous, because it means we’re not learning from history—we’re just using it to validate our own existence.

The past is a mess. It’s ugly. It’s brutal. And that’s what makes it real.

Comments

Leave a Reply