History is both a beautiful rose that colours the day at hand, filling the air with its scent of past growth
And it's also a disgusting bag of trash and vile rot that plagues your journey with stench and filth.
The one thing that history is not is . . . removable.
It sucks . . . it's kind of interesting, and it's immutable. It's not that you can't change things. It's not even that you can't change the "past" in your timelines . . . but history is *anchored* in the cosmos with a haunting permanence.
Enough attempt at poetry. What does it mean?
Civilizations don't "start from scratch." They don't "erase the past." They don't "get over it." They don't "replace the old ways."
In the same breath that there's not point in clinging to an old system, there is no point in waiting or hoping or praising the "new way" in abandonment of all past ventures.
The Koreans and Japanese broke free of the Chinese Dynasties of the day, creating new cultures and new paradigms. But they didn't "eliminate" the Chinese customs, the lineages, the trades. Even sometimes in desperation to change, the spillover was unavoidable.
Americans didn't reject English rule and become "non English" and non British perspective. The indigenous did not return to their land free of the western influence to roam the wilds. And they will not. None of them will not.
The humans will not reject the Earth culture, laws, concepts, perspectives . . . and switch everything in reality over to the "we have aliens" paradigm.
With any luck. We will reach this point-
To hell with everything. We do have aliens.
BUT
Debate whatever you like. I'm pretty sure you will still have officers pulling you on the side of the road asking you for driver's license and registration. You will still have courts (of some kind) . . . probably even more confused and screwed up than they already are. You will still have a group of naysayers insisting the alien thing is all an illusory puppet show.
Everything in your life. The struggles, the monotony, the weird situations you're in, the issues . . . doesn't go away.
The moral is simple. Act like things are already changing. Move with a clarity. What's this thing that I'm signing right now? What am I paying with? Your habits matter. Your claims matter. Nothing will be clean. Nothing will be tidy . . . however, entropically . . . there is a motion toward clarity and harmony (as much as that word can seem convoluted).
I don't really care how much you believe it. If I was really adamant about convincing you I wouldn't be writing it in a forum. However. Starting from scratch is a myth. Waiting for the "big change" is a myth. The new reality is not coming.
The shift is painful, and yet still gradual. I'm not saying there won't be terrible destruction and war. But I'm saying even then you will be set up for a huge let down. You'll say "all this death, this chaos, this destruction . . . and the changes are still moving pathetically slow." But . . . your efforts to induce the change that tear down the obfuscation will be met half-heartedly. It will seem like a pathetic reply to all of your efforts. But it will be a reply.
The moral, or suggestion, is a few things. (1) No good deed goes unpunished. At least that will be the experience on Earth, for the next few centuries. (2) change, as gradual as it is, will never wipe you "clean" from the past. (3) shi(f)t *does* happen as a result of your efforts, no matter how stupidly slow it appears. (4) don't wait for a payoff or an opportunity. That's probably the dumbest thing we can do.