Go to "Don't Just Do Something; Sit There" Continued (time3)
DON'T JUST DO SOMETHING; SIT THERE Continued
2.11 Entropy as Metaphor
''A society's conception of time" write Suzuki and Knudtson in their book, Wisdom of the Elders, "is one of the pillars of its worldview". The way a society views the passage of time, they point out, "plays a crucial role in shaping their relationship with the natural world" (Suzuki and Knudtson 1992 p.142).
It is a common perception that the industrialised West views time as being like an arrow, whereas indigenous cultures are commonly believed to view time as being more akin to a circle or a spiral.
It is clear that Western society does indeed view time as moving in a straight line. In this scheme of things, once we have passed a point on the line, we never return to it.
Our view of history and evolution conforms to this linear approach. For most of this century at least, advances in technology have helped promote the view that humanity has moved through the various stages of its evolutionary journey to the present along a straight, upwardly sloping line of progress. Developments in the last quarter of the century must have caused many people in the West to question this way of viewing human history, but a clear cut substitute for this view is yet to emerge.
Judeo-Christian cosmology, in which people do not remain on Earth when they die, but go instead to an unchanging heaven or hell for all eternity, is also consistent with this linear view of time. A belief in reincarnation would not fit so easily.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, also referred to as the entropy law, supports the view of time as an arrow. This law states that the universe is moving towards a homogeneous state in which no part possesses more energy than any other part. This means that the universe is "winding down". At some time in the future, the Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us, the universe will come to an end because no differences will exist any more.
Edward Goldsmith in his book, The Way (Goldsmith 1992 pp.382-391), questions the applicability of this law to the universe as a whole. He describes the universe as an open system, since it has no identifiable limits. Goldsmith believes it is a mistake to assume that the universe as a whole will behave in the same way as closed systems such as steam in the boiler of a locomotive or hot air in a closed receptacle. It was the observation of closed systems such as these that lead to the formulation of the entropy law, and Goldsmith suggests that its more general application was accepted by scientists only because by doing so, a shortcoming in the Newtonian worldview was addressed.
Events in a world of billiard balls may be reversible, but once you burn a tree to ashes, you can't reverse the process, and there was nothing in Newtonian physics to explain why. The Second Law of Thermodynamics appeared to provide this missing explanation, and so, says Goldsmith, it was accepted against all logic.
If one believes, as I do, that science is a collection of metaphors which reveal as much about their creators as they do about the "real world", then the Second Law of Thermodynamics can be seen as a symbolic representation of our view of the universe -- in much the same way that the Dreamtime stories of Aborigines are an expression of how they see the world. Viewed in this way, the entropy law symbolises and reinforces our view of time as a straight line with a beginning and an end.
Let us return to the assertion by Suzuki and Knudtson that a culture's view of time plays a vital role in determining how that culture interacts with the natural world. How does our linear view of time influence the way we relate to the natural world? Because so many processes in nature are cyclical, I believe that an exclusively linear view of time is an obstacle to an intimate relationship with our environment. By seeing things solely in linear terms, we fail to understand the importance of nature's cycles.
A linear view of time reinforces the notion that time is a scarce commodity which must be filled with as much activity as possible. Filling our lives with so much activity results in high levels of resource consumption. The desire to fit as much activity as possible into our allotted stretch of the time-line also means that we tend to act on the world rather than interact with it. And thirdly, engaging in all this activity means that we operate at a speed which alienates us from the rhythms of the natural world. Once we are cut off from something, we are likely to lack the understanding and the sympathy needed to act in that thing's best interests.
2.12 Indigenous Views of Time
In her book Out of Africa, Karen Blixen makes some intriguing observations about the Kikuyu:
Natives dislike speed . . They are also on friendly terms with time, and the plan of beguiling or killing it does not enter their heads. In fact, the more time you can give them, the happier they are, and if you commission a Kikuyu to hold your horse while you make a visit, you can see by his face that he hopes you will be a long, long time about it. He does not try to pass the time then, but sits down and lives [Blixen 1985 p.171].
I love the last bit. Nothing to do with passing the time -- he sits down and lives. Just being in his world is enough. The contrast with our craving for additional stimulus could not be greater. It makes me wonder about the belief that we live longer than people in other cultures. Improvements in medicine, diet and hygiene mean that by and large, we are present on Earth for a greater number of years than is the case for most other cultures, but do we really live more in those years? What has happened to us?
Modern, city-based life obscures the utter dependence of human beings on their natural environment. This false isolation from the natural world is reflected in, and reinforced by, a way of measuring time which has little relation to natural phenomena.
A day is a measure of the rotation of the Earth about its axis, and a year is a measure of how long it takes the Earth to orbit around the sun, but hours, minutes and seconds bear no relationship to natural phenomena. They are merely a means of coordinating the complex activities of large numbers of human beings.
To indigenous people who measure the passage of time by the movements of the sun and moon across the Earth, clocks must be rather puzzling things. In our civilisation we are so accustomed to thinking in terms of minutes and hours that they seem to possess the same kind of reality as trees or rocks.
Speaking at a Heart Politics Conference in Northern New South Wales in 1993, Mary Graham, an Aboriginal from south-east Queensland, had this to say about how western civilisation measures time: "The clock is a small device for measuring its own ticks... nine o'clock or three o'clock in the afternoon don't really exist at all, does it? But dawn exists, and dusk and midday, but Tuesday or Sunday don't exist".
Whereas the dominant culture appears to recognise only one kind of time, Mary said Aborigines experienced "about eight or nine senses of time. Linear time is just one of many".
Mary Graham stressed that for Aborigines, land provided not merely nurturance, but identity and meaning. "It is our land", she said, "that tells us we are human beings". It would seem that even to say that Aborigines are in a close relationship with their land is misleading, since in their tradition they are not separate from the land, and for them to think of themselves as separate from it would have been inconceivable before they were introduced to such concepts.
Similarly, time as something separate from the changes occurring in their land would have been meaningless to traditional Aborigines. The contrast between such an experience and the European reliance on "a small device for measuring its own ticks" could not be greater.
To increase our understanding of how we are affected by the way we perceive time, and to awaken us to different ways of experiencing, it will be useful to look at how other cultures view the passage of time.
Indigenous cultures' apprehensions of time reflect the intimate connection with the environments of which they are a part. In Wisdom of the Elders, Suzuki and Knudtson (1992) give several examples of cultures in which time is understood to be circular. It is useful to give some examples to illustrate the kinds of connections made between individuals and their environments.
The Mnong Gar indigenous people of Vietnam's south-central highlands name each year according to "the forests we have eaten" (ibid p.154). A traditional shifting agricultural society, they clear an area of forest and cultivate it until declining soil fertility means they must clear a new area of forest. After about twenty years of moving from one area of forest to another, they return to the site they cultivated some two decades before. A year may bear a name such as "The year we ate the forest of the Stone Spirit Goo", the forest of the Stone Spirit Goo being a particular area of forest which they cleared and cultivated in the period in question. Since after about twenty years, they return to an area they have cultivated previously, two periods of time about 20 years apart will have exactly the same name (ibid).
This way of measuring time clearly shows how closely the Mnong Gar are connected with the forest, and it shows a circular understanding of time. If the industrialised world were to measure time by "the forests we have eaten",then its time would seen as passing with great rapidity. And in a linear rather than circular fashion, since once we eat them, they generally stay eaten.
In 1987, the Gitksan and Wetsuweten People of Central British Columbia were involved in a court case as part of their ongoing struggle to gain legal title to some of their traditional home lands. They attempted to explain to the court that their circular perception of time meant that their notions of cause and effect differ from those of the white invaders. To these two tribes, say Suzuki and Knudtson, the present is affected by "the seasonal pulsations of nature, the lives of ancestors long dead, and the world-shaping transformations of the mythic era of creation"(ibid p153).
The Barren Grounds Inuit of northern Canada divide the year into sixteen stages or months. Each stage is named according to the natural events which are characteristic of that period. The first stage in their year, for example, is named Ate'rwik, which translates as "the moon in which the Caribou go down from the forests in the south to Baker Lake". Nuliarwik the sixth stage, is "the moon in which the caribou mate''. Thus, the Inuit's way of measuring time connects them to the caribou on whom they depend, to the region in which they live and to the cyclical changes which occur each year (ibid p.146).
2.13 Time, Parenting, Education and Environment
Our views of time -- particularly the belief that there isn't enough of it -- have serious consequences for how we parent and educate our children. The way we parent and educate affects the kind of society we are creating. How this society will impact on the environment is a complex issue and it is beyond the scope of this paper to deal with it in any depth. Without a more detailed analysis, what I have to say here is fairly superficial and speculative.
My main aim is to show that there will inevitably be links between how we bring up our children and how they will treat the environment. And environmental considerations alone are reason enough to spend more time on parenting and educating our children.
One of the most obvious connections is that we are role models for our children. Although some may rebel against the values of their parents, it is inevitable that the values of one generation will bear a close resemblance to the previous one.
"The Cat's in the Cradle", a sad and evocative song by Harry Chapin about the relationship between a father and his son illustrates this point perfectly. While his son is growing up, his father repeatedly says he'd love to spend more time with his son -- if only he weren't so busy. Once the father retires, he wants to spend time with his son, but his son says "I'd love to Dad if I could find the time", and he realises that his son has grown up just like him. This is a common situation, and it is tragic for its human costs. It is also tragic in its environmental implications. In this manner, the values of competitiveness, busyness and overconsumption are passed from one generation to the next.
If the warnings about the risk of impending environmental collapse are even partially true, human beings are in for a difficult time in the next fifty years. To cope with the times ahead, people will need to be emotionally healthy and capable of great resourcefulness and integrity. Because we choose to spend our time earning money and consuming resources rather than devoting the time needed to bring up children adequately, we are failing to prepare them for what lies ahead.
Psychologist and family therapist Stephen Biddulph believes that "it's highly likely that boys have a biological need for several hours of one-to-one male contact per day. Put another way, to have a demanding job, to commute to work in a city and raise sons well is an impossibility. Something has to give" (Biddulph1994).
Traditionally, the job of parenting has been left to a large extent to women. Women are now spending more time working and the impact of this on children's' upbringing can at this stage only be guessed at.
Our system of mass education concentrates on what can be taught easily and quickly. Information can be transmitted far more quickly than values, and so it is the transmission of information that our education system aims at. Children are left to acquire values by chance rather than conscious design.
Given the suspect nature of our cultural values, it is easy to see this as a good thing. However, if a just, sustainable society is ever to become a reality, our methods of education and parenting will have to change. The characteristics of a society are to a large extent determined by the character of its citizens. You can't build a sound building out of crumbling bricks, no matter how good the architecture is.
David Orr, writing in The Trumpeter (1990, p.52), had this to say about the effects of German education in the 1920s and 1930s:
Elie Wiesel recently made the same point about the Nazis. In most respects, the Germans of the 1920s and 1930s were the best-educated people on earth, but their education did not serve as an adequate barrier to barbarity. What was wrong with their education? In Weisel's words, "It emphasised theories instead of values, concepts rather than human beings, abstractions rather than consciousness, answers instead of questions, ideology and efficiency rather than conscience" (Orr 1990 p.53]
One teacher can successfully pass on information to thirty or forty students, but values, relationship skills, and a spirit of enquiry are not taught so easily in large, regimented classes. They are best passed on by mentors and role models in a one-to-one relationship involving mutual respect and understanding. Such relationships are time-consuming and unlikely to flourish in a system where pupil-teacher relationships of this nature are impossible and parents "don't have enough time" to spend with their children.
2.14 The Pressure to Operate on "Someone Else's Clock"
One of the people I interviewed for the research section of this project talked about how most people operate on "someone else's clock". This is an accurate description of the way in which most of us live. We move sat a speed which is determined not by our own internal rhythms, but by the demands of a society obsessed with end results. Slowing down in this situation is difficult. In a society less obsessed with speed and more tolerant of idleness, slowing down would be a much easier proposition.
The difficulties of slowing down in our culture are virtually the same as those encountered by anyone wishing to simplify her life and reduce her consumption. Alan Durning identifies the problems involved :
At present, living simply may be an unattainable ideal for most people. People's choices are constrained by the social pressures, physical infrastructure and institutional channels that envelop them. Most would be immobilized if they abandoned their cars while still living amidst mass-transitless urban sprawl. Few workers have the option of trading extra salary for reduced working hours because few employers offer it, and they could not accept it quickly anyway, with mortgage and car payments, insurance premiums, college tuition, utility bills and so forth making demands on their incomes. Thus, a strategy for reducing consumption must focus as much on changing the framework in which people make choices as it does on the choices they make (Duming 1994 p.78).
The basic question raised by Durning about "changing the framework" in which people make their choices as well as attempting to influence the choices themselves is discussed further in the "Inconclusion" to this paper.
There is in our culture a strong pressure to have a certain minimum number of material possessions. To get these possessions, people need money. To get money, they need jobs. Therefore, the pressure to own things is a pressure to be busy.
There is also a strong social pressure to achieve. People's self-worth is often dependent not on who they are, but what they have achieved. In order to achieve things and impress their peers, people need to be busy. In addition, busyness itself is closely related to self-esteem. Busyness often brings with it a sense of self-importance. Idleness is equated with worthlessness.
Social isolation is another likely consequence of refusing to rush. If everyone I know is rushing, then taking a stroll is likely to be a very solitary exercise. I may have to run with everyone else if I am to have any sort of conversation, even if it is likely to be rather breathless and superficial.
Durning claims it is necessary to focus as much on the "framework in which people make choices" as on the choices themselves. How then, can this framework be changed? This is a big question. To answer it, one has to ask the related question of how this framework is created in the first place.
This framework is in effect, the value system of a society. In theory at least, all individuals in a society have a say in determining this framework. As Bill Moyer points out, "the official powerholders in any society can only rule as long as they have the consent of the people" (Moyer 1990 p.13). Similarly, those who have most of the power to influence the values of a society can do so only with the consent of the people. However, it is clear that the power to influence cultural values is no more evenly distributed than is political power. An analysis of what sections of society exert a disproportionate influence on its values, and how they allowed to do so, would be a step towards influencing the "framework in which people make choices".
Such an analysis is beyond the scope of this paper. It is clear, though, that some sections of society have a short term interest in promoting busyness as a virtue.
Go to "Don't Just Do Something; Sit There" Continued (time3)