Based on the media we consume, many of us live in the Never-Ending Now.
Much of the content we see was created in the past 24 hours — and will be forgotten by next week.
Rather than savoring the greatest literature in history, our media diet is the equivalent of fast food.
Albert Einstein compared those who only read newspapers to "an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses." Einstein said that such a person is "completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.”
Of course, people in the past had their own prejudices. They were wrong about many things.
Still, history tends to filter out that which is misguided or no longer relevant. The stuff that stands the test of time tends to offer us evergreen wisdom. Stuff recently posted on social media has not gone through that filtration process.
The future is in the past. We're more likely to benefit from what has been trending for decades, not days.