Good post, but I would push against an example in the opening section. Most New Agers very much did *not* expect the end of time, they expected the beginning of a new age (the Age of Aquarius or Satya Yuga or the Millennium or whatnot), which might or might not involve the destruction of the present one; hence the name "New Age". Theirs seems a very cyclical conception of time, often explicitely inspired by Hindu/Buddhist cosmology. Of course this doesn't affect much the post's main points.
Yeah I like the spiral metaphor, but you're right--you can get spirals ad infinitum!
There's a great gif of this happening which I sadly can't find--it starts with a spiral extending in a line, then the line loops back into a spiral-of-spirals, which then becomes a spiral-of-spirals-of-spirals, etc
Excellent article. I think it's helpful to think of time like a wheel. Cycles that roll forward. There is repetition and progress concurrently. And it is only through iteration that we see progress.
I don’t know if I’m stating the obvious, but as per Iain McGilchrist’s model of reality (which explains SO much that I would encourage anyone to delve into it), time as an arrow is the fruit a left hemisphere view whereas time as a circle is the fruit of a right hemispheric perspective. It goes a lot deeper than that if you’re willing to dig a little.
Great post as always, Mr. Owl. Again I appreciate the figures that blend in with the rest of your Substack!
I really like what you said:
> A purely linear view of time is exhausting. There is a perpetual sense of forward motion, with no rest.
I really feel like this is something that meditation has helped me with. It has given me the capacity to stop trying to keep up and just rest.
The cyclic model has some good defendants from a mathematical perspective. In a cambridge princeton cooperation a cycling model od the universe has ben proposed: https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/turok07/turok07_index.html
https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0111030.pdf
Good post, but I would push against an example in the opening section. Most New Agers very much did *not* expect the end of time, they expected the beginning of a new age (the Age of Aquarius or Satya Yuga or the Millennium or whatnot), which might or might not involve the destruction of the present one; hence the name "New Age". Theirs seems a very cyclical conception of time, often explicitely inspired by Hindu/Buddhist cosmology. Of course this doesn't affect much the post's main points.
This is fair! There were definitely some claims of a looming apocalypse but maybe they didn't really come from New Agers per se.
If you're interested in music, perhaps this book would interest you.
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520257979/bachs-cycle-mozarts-arrow
This looks awesome, thanks!
Wouldn't a 'spiral' view of time contain both the linear and the cyclical views of time?
Although i guess then someone might ask, "does the spiral go anywhere? Or is it going in a loop and connecting with itself again?"
Yeah I like the spiral metaphor, but you're right--you can get spirals ad infinitum!
There's a great gif of this happening which I sadly can't find--it starts with a spiral extending in a line, then the line loops back into a spiral-of-spirals, which then becomes a spiral-of-spirals-of-spirals, etc
Interestingly, DNA packaging does something like this: https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/dna-packaging-nucleosomes-and-chromatin-310/
Excellent article. I think it's helpful to think of time like a wheel. Cycles that roll forward. There is repetition and progress concurrently. And it is only through iteration that we see progress.
I don’t know if I’m stating the obvious, but as per Iain McGilchrist’s model of reality (which explains SO much that I would encourage anyone to delve into it), time as an arrow is the fruit a left hemisphere view whereas time as a circle is the fruit of a right hemispheric perspective. It goes a lot deeper than that if you’re willing to dig a little.
"we notice novelty while repetition fades into unconsciousness. " - I loved this read, thank you for putting it together