It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.
Hindsight can be merciless. People of any given era often look back in time and wonder how their predecessors could have been so dimwitted.
Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions
Time perspective is one of the most powerful influences on all of human behavior. We're trying to show how people become biased to being exclusively past-, present- or future-oriented.
There is a tendency for writers to be most exciting by whatever they just wrote. Sometimes that excitement is warranted. Sometimes on further listen it's not as good as something they did a couple of years ago, but it's just not in their sights at that particular time.
The problem with every story is you tell it after the fact.
Every age thinks its battle the most important of all.
As to judging our own time, and thereby gaining some basis for a judgment of future possibilities, we are doubtless not only too close to it to appraise it but too much formed by it and enclosed within it to do so.
