The end of history illusion
I've recently come across this term - the end of history illusion - and found it absolutely fascinating. You know that feeling like you've accomplished everything there is to accomplish, desired everything there is to desire, like you've grown to fill as much space – physically and metaphorically – as there's room to grow into?
I've experienced this with the full conviction that this is it for me as far as a particular venture or point of view was concerned and, yet, I've almost always surprised myself (sometimes years later) as I revisited it again with new energy and perspective. Looking back at myself, I am definitely not the teen I was or the young adult I was. I can see exponential trajectories of growth in my past selves. I know for a fact that my current self would never make some of those past choices again. Yikes! And yet looking to the future make me feel like I’m solid now, I will never change again, nothing else will surprise me or upturn my perspectives.
Let’s get a bit more concrete here, without giving away any embarrassing or otherwise unappealing stories about my youth… I thought I knew everything there is to know about the stifling and intriguing world of Victorian courting from Jane Austen - enter Bridgerton more than a decade later, with its reimagined ethnically diverse pan-Victorian universe. Yes, guilty pleasure, I admit.
I was a devout church goer up until about my mid twenties, convinced that this unshakeable absolute was to stay in my life unchanged forever, condescendingly thinking of life scenarios that might seed doubt, but never in my own world of course. It took one untimely death of a dear friend to create seismic shifts in this seemingly static paradigm and yet, here I am, having eventually found my own spirituality which loosely revolves around mindfulness and is slowly starting to pick up more and more hints of the religion of my upbringing.
I am not alone. According to a Science journal backed study, which looked at 19,000 people aged between 18 and 68, there exists a certain bias which makes us believe that we’ve changed drastically in the past but will only change slightly in the future:
“People, it seems, regard the present as a watershed moment at which they have finally become the person they will be for the rest of their lives.”
That conviction that "there's nothing else left for me to achieve" is known as the end of history illusion. We tend to experience it particularly acutely around milestone birthdays or, perhaps, sometimes out of the blue, or even simply because we're feeling blue. You surely too know the feeling? Excuse the laziness but to quote Wiki:
“The end-of-history illusion is a psychological illusion in which individuals of all ages believe that they have experienced significant personal growth and changes in tastes up to the present moment, but will not substantially grow or mature in the future.”
It's only when you get older and wiser when you can look back at yourself and smile sympathetically at this kind of thinking which is both ignorant and apocalyptic. I suppose, this is precisely what many elderly people feel when they see us spring chickens pecking away at life. I can see why we’re wired to think this way. It gives us an anchor, something more or less certain to hold onto. I too like consistency, consistent people, consistent loyal friends and family members that I know I can fall back on. Who doesn’t want that? However, the truth seems to be that we are amorphous shapes filled with desires and hopes and beliefs and as we get bruised and moulded and caressed by life’s experiences we can always become something else. I appreciate that this all might sound rather obscure. So, let this outpour be a hopeful thought, the kind of thought that can nudge you out of any kind of apathy you might find yourself in to pursue more growth and witness those new horizons and new moons which are always just over the hill.
Vasily Kandinsky, Composition 8 (1923)