RE: The time is...
I think that context in which we have numerically based cycles needs to be flushed out more to understand why:
1) everyday is given the same importance as every other day
and 2) time projects the illusion of permanence.
The concept of cyclical time is not new. It is a cornerstone for the ways that most civilization conceptualize time. Just look at ancient Mayan, Native American, Chinese, and Asian Indian cultures conceptualize time. If anything, the West is marked by a break from cyclical time, conceptualizing it as a linear progression: the march of time.
Therefore the context of time in which you are writing reveal some thing else about our Western perception of time. We live in a society so large just in sheer numbers the important events in individual lives are statistically insignificant to be considered special because there are multiple someones somewhere elses having the exact same experience, whether it be giving birth, getting married, or passing away.
But more importantly we live in a society that breaks social relationships that would provide counter evidence to the regularity of day to day experience. We no longer live in a society where children are being raised in loving daily relationship with their grandparents. Cross generational relationships position us to question the effects of time. They allow for the recognition that we may have youth now but it might be fleeting. It allows for the elderly and experienced to directly relate their successes and failures within the context of being in the twilight of their lives. Finally, it forces us to address mortality, intellectually, emotionally, morally, and culturally, rather than shipping our old off to nursing homes to die in quiet disgrace so they don't mar our mistaken beliefs that we are immortal.
Another social relationship that we break (and Duncan you should have seen this coming) is our relationship with the land, with the real cyclical progressions of the seasons, and with farmers and farms who manifest the relationship between time (in season) and the land (in what is grown). Every day we can go to the grocery store and buy anything regardless of the season. By doing this we have no commitment to living in a temporal world. If we eat locally and by the seasons, we use another sense, taste, to perceive the passing of time that allows us to mark more occasions as special for everyone living in that region. Unlike birth or death that is happening all around us at all times, the first strawberries, blackberries and tomatoes of a season mark for all of us committed to eating locally a special time, an occasion worth remembering and marking as special. Harvest time is another such time, especially in smaller rural communities where harvest is an event that calls on everyone to participate and situates them in time and place.
Sorry this is so rambling. This was just going to be a response till I realized I wrote this much.
Craig
1) everyday is given the same importance as every other day
and 2) time projects the illusion of permanence.
The concept of cyclical time is not new. It is a cornerstone for the ways that most civilization conceptualize time. Just look at ancient Mayan, Native American, Chinese, and Asian Indian cultures conceptualize time. If anything, the West is marked by a break from cyclical time, conceptualizing it as a linear progression: the march of time.
Therefore the context of time in which you are writing reveal some thing else about our Western perception of time. We live in a society so large just in sheer numbers the important events in individual lives are statistically insignificant to be considered special because there are multiple someones somewhere elses having the exact same experience, whether it be giving birth, getting married, or passing away.
But more importantly we live in a society that breaks social relationships that would provide counter evidence to the regularity of day to day experience. We no longer live in a society where children are being raised in loving daily relationship with their grandparents. Cross generational relationships position us to question the effects of time. They allow for the recognition that we may have youth now but it might be fleeting. It allows for the elderly and experienced to directly relate their successes and failures within the context of being in the twilight of their lives. Finally, it forces us to address mortality, intellectually, emotionally, morally, and culturally, rather than shipping our old off to nursing homes to die in quiet disgrace so they don't mar our mistaken beliefs that we are immortal.
Another social relationship that we break (and Duncan you should have seen this coming) is our relationship with the land, with the real cyclical progressions of the seasons, and with farmers and farms who manifest the relationship between time (in season) and the land (in what is grown). Every day we can go to the grocery store and buy anything regardless of the season. By doing this we have no commitment to living in a temporal world. If we eat locally and by the seasons, we use another sense, taste, to perceive the passing of time that allows us to mark more occasions as special for everyone living in that region. Unlike birth or death that is happening all around us at all times, the first strawberries, blackberries and tomatoes of a season mark for all of us committed to eating locally a special time, an occasion worth remembering and marking as special. Harvest time is another such time, especially in smaller rural communities where harvest is an event that calls on everyone to participate and situates them in time and place.
Sorry this is so rambling. This was just going to be a response till I realized I wrote this much.
Craig
posted by searching_monkey at 6:03 AM
2 Comments:
Sup Craig!
this was going to be an entry until I realized that I wrote so little..
I really like the second part of the post about land. I feel like that puts together the type of 'equivilency/erasure' that I was thinking about... and draws out the breaks between my experience of time in this place and other experiences of time.
I think I need work out a few things about what I meant by cyclical time... I stumbled around your point of circularity when writing. I suppose one way I think of linear time in our society is less of a line and more an accumulation of events, mapped out against a grid called the calender. I think the distinction is one of prediction and regularity (which is why I think your last point about food/earth is relevant).
who knows... I certainly don't
Duncan
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