Time Is A Cultural Concept
In the western world we perceive time in a linear fashion. There is past, present and future even though this notion has been debated by philosophers and physicists alike. As westerners, we are helplessly bounded by this linearity since our linguistic and epistemological endeavors are structured around a world of past, future and present. The only culture that is free from time as we know it, are the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory of Australia.
I was lucky enough to experience and study this culture first hand. I won’t claim to understand it since I am not sure I do. Western culture has bestowed me with the linear time predisposition since birth. It is almost impossible to escape this form of brainwashing since it defines our very foundation of culture and religion. In this post, I will rather try to explain how I perceived aboriginal concepts myself and let you draw your own conclusions.
We have been brought up to perceive things in a progressive manner. Things that have a beginning and things that have an end. We build everything around us on this concept whether they are ideas like religion or tools for everyday life. The term of eternity cannot be quite grasped by our minds since everything around us is perishable. When we apply eternity the brain hits a brick wall. We stop thinking.
In physics the eternal is just a symbol, an idea with no demonstrable proof. Same applies to religion when we talk about eternal life. We talk about it, we think about it but we don’t really grasp it. We can’t because we live our everyday life based on a linear unfolding of events. Even religion itself and its philosophy is based on a timely progression of events.
Aboriginals lack this limitation of perception of time and rather perceive the world much more expansive. They picture the entirety of the human experience to be the “dreamtime” where we are simultaneously dead and alive, imaginary and real. Everything exists within the dreamtime and has the same value. What ones gets to experience in a given version of reality, is just relationships of concepts. For example, our perception can relate to a mountain that has existed for millions of years. The reality of the mountain is subjective based on who observes it and under what premises. Our memory, our dreams and our current “awake activity” are just different tools to perceive the same reality of the idea of the mountain. Dreams are just as important as being awake. Memories as important as future projections. Mountains don’t have intrinsic values, power or qualities. We apply them through social constructs. The mountain stops being a mountain when it becomes a grave for a grandparent, a quest for survival for the tribe, a point in reference in geography, a source of livelihood for the miner.
This notion might appear to flirt sophistry but it is not. For example, in neurobiology we have recently discovered that much of what we remember is bogus information mixed with dreams. In other words what we perceive as memories from which we identify ourselves is jumbled up information that deceives us. We are also very aware of perceptual flaws and how the mind can play dirty tricks. Those can either be cognitive biases or plain shortcomings of our limited sensory system. Reality as we perceive it, is much like a dream due to the nature of our faulty biological entity. A google search with the words “cognitive biases” or “optical illusions” will challenge every single idea one has about “objective reality”. A reindeer can see the world with Ultraviolet vision. Imagine now how humans would develop philosophy, science and religion if we could only see in black and white like most marine animals. Our perception of reality is predetermined from our very biology.
This is not to say that there is a “higher” plain of existence that is more “real”. Religious folk, spiritualists and many others have tried to build an alternate reality around the idea of the unknown. Imagination can play many more tricks than reality itself. This is after all how human theories have structured our current world views.
We build fictional back stories, narratives, to create meaning for our life. We need a purpose to fulfill. The concept of time provides this gateway for linear ritual of progression much like a story does. Religious folk are required to follow specific rules for life. It serves as a preparation for the next.
If we are not religious we structure our life on another, similar concept. Perhaps a career, or family or convincing oneself that an endeavor will make the world a better place. We create a narrative so we can extrapolate meaning. Linearity of time reinforces this idea. It rather functions as an excuse rather than a physical entity. Einstein seems to agree on this as well.
Instead of a developing a linear, progressive narrative, aboriginals perceive the world with circles of relatedness. Since everything, always exists, an entity can only relate to another based on how subjects choose to interact with it. A meeting in an aboriginal community won’t take place based on geological time but rather focus on the relationship one circle of existence has with another. In the western world we will engage socially through a webbed cultural architecture. For example: Dating -> connection -> copulation -> cohabitation -> procreation -> family all bounded by geological time. In the Aboriginal perception it can easily be: [copulation, connection, cohabitation] all at once and on top of each other with time being irrelevant. This is why it is rather silly to as an aboriginal purpose of “final purpose” or “end of the line meaning” or “where do you see yourself in 10 years?” Everyday is just a form of existence, not a self fulfilling prophecy. The trip is what matters, not the destination.
Perhaps the most evident difference with the western culture appears when it comes to matters of death and decay. Having spent quite some time in a hospital in the Northern Territory, I was lucky to experience how Aboriginal people perceived death. In my astonishment, I never saw anyone being sad or crying over somebody’s death. Most of the time they were smiling or laughing if someone got seriously injured, making fun of each other as if nothing happened. Suddenly Steve-O from Jackass made a whole more sense.
The sick and near dead seemed to have a calm look on their face. This perception seemed to have been created from the idea that they are not really alive or dead. They believe that they just change a state of being. In the dreamtime, their entire worldview, they are always dead-alive. This is how people will see them. This is also why the aboriginal people do not like pictures of the dead to be shown. It shows a false perception of who that person really is currently and it is considered offensive. A photograph tries to preserve something that goes against reality, or what they perceive as real.
Their view also challenges our dearest religious beliefs and shows our hypocrisy when it comes to eternal ideas like heaven. If we really believed in eternity and that our friends and family really are with God or somewhere better, we wouldn’t be so sad when someone died. We wouldn’t want to perceive their memory through photographs or visiting their graves since their existence, much like their perception, is divine and eternal. This is to show how the western language and culture do not rhyme with our philosophy and how we rather fall short of our own devices. This lack of intellectual consistency can say a lot about our culture.
I am not sure I will ever be able to perceive the dreamtime as the Aboriginal people do. Language plays an important role to this since it shapes perception. It really changes how one thinks and acts. Aboriginal languages are vastly different from the western ones since they are not time-specific. This is why no matter how much I try to explain this to you by using a western, time-based language, it is quite futile. I hope though I have opened a new door for your perception to understand the world in a different way. Remember, western languages were built based on trade and economic relationships first and then as perceptual mechanisms.
We often say “live for today” or “seize the day” to express the ultimate freedom of a living being’s experience out of time. We acknowledge that somehow we are enslaved by time but we are not really sure what to do about it. An elder in one of those communities always looked at me and smiled when I was trying to get explanations. He always answered me the same “Your questions are the answers”.
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Fascinating post. I have read about this before. I think as you suggest it is almost impossible for us to see the aboriginal perspective of time because of our western conditioning. I also enjoyed the photos immensely - great choices:)
I have spend quite some sleepless nights trying to decipher the aboriginal dreamtime. Maybe we can't escape some amount of brainwashing after all.
I think maybe (and I'm not suggesting you do this) people might be able experience it using psychedelics (again I am not suggesting anyone do anything illegal or dangerous). They do seem alter time perception and open up the mind to things that it would otherwise be closed to.
I experimented with plenty of drugs back in my twenties including psychedelics. What these drugs do basically is to cause different neural firing — much like you make a computer behave in weird patterns if you build a bug and put it in the system file. Many aboriginals also use them.
Even that though, the experience of the psychedelics is directly related to the conditioning one has already. Unless one feeds their baby LSD from birth and being raised equally by monkeys, wolfs, birds and humans I don't see how one can have a clean perceptive slate.
This is why i think we can safely assume that the whole thing is rather a social construct. We have created time to suit our physiology.
For sure it can be therapeutic and there is growing evidence to support it but the current prohibition on these substances makes it almost impossible to use them in the right setting (unless you go abroad like Ayehuasca in South America).
Interesting. I have never tried them and given my mental history it is probably for the best as I would likely be the person that would flip out and go completely crazy!
My experience is that you have to be confident with who you are, have no underlying fears and be relatively healthy.
Native Americans forced psychedelic experience as a form of therapy for people with anxiety. In a way it conditions the person to face their fear, something that even modern psychology supports.
This is incredible. I knew I was a linear thinker, but had never thought of it this way. Plus, you have educated me on the aboriginal culture, which I know little about.
There's only one thing in my worldview that doesn't change: Steve-O is still a jackass. Wait, I'm a donkey; what does that make me?
Thank you man. Glad you liked it. I wrote another one about depression and how they basically hold the cure. Here it is
https://steemit.com/health/@kyriacos/depression-is-a-disease-of-civilization-aboriginal-australians-hold-the-cure
Based on the aboriginal worldview it makes you a retro game of an alternate reality. :)
"Time is a measurement of motion; as such, it is a type of relationship. Time applies only within the universe, when you define a standard—such as the motion of the earth around the sun. If you take that as a unit, you can say: “This person has a certain relationship to that motion; he has existed for three revolutions; he is three years old.” But when you get to the universe as a whole, obviously no standard is applicable. You cannot get outside the universe. The universe is eternal in the literal sense: non-temporal, out of time." -L.P.
Great quote @mughat. Thank you
Time exists regardless of your perceptions. There was a time when this comment was not posted, a time when I typed it, and if you can see this, you are experiencing a point in time after I typed it.
If you are watching our planet with a really large telescope from the galaxy of andromeda you would see human beings living in caves.
I advice you to look into Eintein's special relativity.
Even on our very planet humans see a different timestamp based on different timezones. You haven't thought this through now have you? :)
You haven't thought your rebuttal through now, have you? :)
a meme won't cut it pal
Just a remark: Looking back in time from a great distance, or moving very fast, you would see things happening sooner or later, faster or slower, but still in the same order.
Well, this is where science starts to flirt with philosophy. Supposedly, based on Edward Hubble, we are experiencing a great expanse. There is a possibility at one point the universe will contract and we wouldn't know how events will unfold. I am not saying that time would start rolling back but it might actually come to a hold. Again, we are experiencing a point in time of this existence because our species happened to evolve the way it did. We are still bounded by specific rules.
How do you know or how can you tell?
Curious question:
Our concept of time as a model of reality has served us well when developing technology. There is something much of our technology is based on, and so closely related to time I hesitate to bring it up, and that is frequency. The beating of the heart, the number of times you eat between sunsets, the sunsets themselves, the dripping of water, etc. are all rather direct things in our perceptions, maybe more direct than time itself, and in some way a relationship as @mughat quotes.
Did you find out or hear anything from the Aboriginals about frequency as a concept?
Technology is just a manifestation of our shortcomings. For example a cat doesn't need a house because it has fur. We develop much of our technology instinctively much like a bird knows how to build a nest to procreate. Technology is just our games to play along and survive while we try to juggle our rather elongated memories. A peacock is quite useless if you just see it but evolutionary is as successful as we are. This is all that matters at the end of the day.
All the things you mention are patterns. Loops. We choose to related to specific loops as stepping stones. Everything is a loop including life itself. Everything eventually creates a pattern. The only thing that changes is the point of view. This is how aboriginal people see time. This is why it becomes pointless.
They often laugh at western culture because we are stuck in loops. We do the same mistakes in relationships, we want to do the same things over and over again. We create rituals much like a bird performs a mating dance or a male spider sacrifices to the female for the sake of procreating.
I don't think they even have the word "frequency" in their lexicon. It is rather obsolete if you think about it. It is as useless as the word "nothing" since there is always something.
Had a bit too much whisky for this, but I'll have a go:
Offhand, I think "our" model of time is the preferred one because it predicts better and because it is more enabling in building other models that predict well. I do have an engineering job to consider, you know 8-). But if everything is loops, you wouldn't feel much need for predictions, I suppose.
Their model wouldn't yield much technology, not sure it even includes all causality, but it sounds superior when it comes to contentment and happiness, not criteria we are used to applying to models of time, or any other scientific models, for that matter.
But it is still interesting. Many physics theories are time-symmetric. There could well be another, higher-level model using one or more extra dimensions with many loops, with "our" model having rolled out all loops as a special case.
Somebody who can observe the extra dimensions could make slices through the model that project time as moving backwards, standing still, looping, etc.
Other than that, it is very hard to get my head around the Aboriginals' concept of time, but I'm going to have a try.
Are we really that good with predictions though even though they make loops? Take the stock market for example where trillions are poured for this very reason. Most people that work there at top engineers but still they can't predict anything really.
Aboriginals of the Northern Territory of Australia are considered to be the happiest people on earth based on 3 different indexes. Check my post about depression here
https://steemit.com/health/@kyriacos/depression-is-a-disease-of-civilization-aboriginal-australians-hold-the-cure
Knowledge and making everything automatic doesn't necessarily make people happy since it gives them much time for contemplating which is the beginning of doubt, self reflection, search for purpose. Progress and happiness have little to do with each other. Now, if someone else has the means and you don't and you can compare then you are more likely to be more miserable. Ignorance IS bliss after all.
Their way of thinking i similar to quantum physics. Everything is 3D concentric circles that intersect. If you try to think about everything this way you will get a headache.
I was thinking of predictions in physics about the behaviour of physical systems, mechanical, electrical, chemical, etc., the models engineers use to design and build things. Engineers working on models to predict the stock market, well, I do have an opinion on them, but it's not relevant to this conversation. The word "top" isn't in it, I can tell you that.
Quantum physics for me is just a model, and I can do the math and translate the outcome into something I can use, but I always avoided interpretations of the model, as I don't find metaphysics very useful other than as a passtime. Still, the idea of particles being in all states at the same time and those states' only collapsing into a single state when you observe them seems related enough to the Aboriginals way of thinking, as are theories where a number of extra dimensions are introduced to build a model and "rolled up" again when the results are interpreted to arrive at the 4 dimensions we use in every-day life.
The models and math don't give me headaches, but the metaphysical interpretations do, as does the Aboriginals' way of thinking, another thing they have in common 8-).
Don't get me wrong. I am not buying for a second the parallel universes theory or the connection of the macro with the micro world. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence and I need a lot more convincing to buy the whole thing.
I don't even think aboriginals believe in extra dimensions. They rather believe that each person constructs their own version of reality which I believe is extremely true even by engineering standards. If you perceive each human as a separate tank where all laws of thermodynamics take place then each and every human that every lived on this petty rock, has a unique view and interpretation about the world.
When we agree with some rules of communication, whether those are mathematics, language or any other discipline we compromise in a way in order to communicate something. Consider how 2 lovers in a way see each other completely different but end up sharing one thing because they simply want to be loved and found each other by aspiring to their own desires.
Take another example. Cosmology. We have all those constants but nobody knows where and how they came to be. Yet we base so many predictions on those models that often fall short.
Engineering works so well on earth because the time-space which they are tested is confined to specific rules. It works much like a rock works when a monkey drops a coconut from a specific distance on it in order to brake it open. The monkey knows the rules even if it doesn't understand physics. We are not far from their level. The difference in perspective of humans and bonobos is similar to bonobos and orangutans.
Its easy to see our futility when we add a couple of new variables for the same problem, e.g designing a simple toilet for the space station.We suddenly need to take into consideration a completely new set of variables for the very same tool. Also consider the fact that 99.999% of humanity has no idea how any of all these toys work whether on space or earth.
Sure engineering has helped us build toys to make life easier but all those toys came as a result for our shortcomings. There is a quote from the book "Hitchhikes guide to the galaxy" that covers this whole thing up.
". For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons."
ps: Engineering is the only respected set of disciplines that can be considered scientific based on my standards. It is the only one that has replicability at high rates and follows epistemological principles.
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Having become a global power isn't the only measure of success. Global powers become global powers through violence, competition, military might, lack of empathy and greed, not by cooperating to make people content or reduce suffering. Much depends on what you see as "success".
Great post, thanks, have you ever worked with altered states of consciousness that change the way you experience time? Through this, I believe you may be able to get a taste of perceiving the dreamtime as the Aboriginal people do.
I commented on this in a comment above.
May I know, for the record, which kind of skills in physics you have , exactly? Student, Bachelor, PhD?
If you want to make a point never ask someone about their qualifications. Even if I had those your disagreement wouldn't change much. You just need a reason to validate your opinion based on appeal to authority.
Make yourself a reason, most of people in the planet are paying their bills because they are "competent". And yes, being "competent" IS a point. Being competent is not about "authority", is about being entitled to write about an issue. And, I repeat, most of people is paid for doing a given job, for the only reason "they are competent".
I know, people coming from human studies aren't aware of it. This is why the serve at Starbucks, more or less: they aren't competent for any other job.
Everybody is entitled to write about any issue, even when you secretly wish they would shut up.
People can have skills in fields they studied privately and not in university.
Competence of an author is irrelevant, you only deal with what an author writes and you judge that.
An argument is not proven wrong or made irrelevant just because the author has no qualifications in the field he writes about.
Of course you are allowed to talk about surgery, but, sorry for that, when I look for surgery, I look for someone competent.
Lesson: competence is what makes your writings valuable.
You may write anything even without being competent, of course: this will be worth a shit, and named as "white noise". Useless , worthless, and not valuable at all.
This is what people "with a real job" names as "being competent".
Btw, I muted you , you are annoying. Grow some IQ, before I spend time with you. And yes, I know about quantum physics. Which is the reason I think your whole post is new-age bullshit for people which never studied any STEM.
It's not my post.
You are even contradicting yourself. Very incompetent. Now re-read what you said, and re-read my reply, and stick to the points you initially made. You're all over the place. You may also want to work on your English, it doesn't always parse.
I did study basic STEM, enough to make this post.
Very interesting read. Now that I read it again, while revising for my physics exams, I remembered that entropy has a way to give time a direction. That is, the direction of time is that which increases entropy (or keeps it constant).
Since Entropy is a measure of order (or information), then that means that time will only move towards disorder. That's why a whole egg can only becomes scrambled, not the opposite . You might argue that this is a probabilistic argument, and I would agree. But in a way it gives an epistemological arrow of time.
To contradict myself
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loschmidt%27s_paradox
Underlying physical laws are time symmetric where as entropy which is a general statement of such laws is asymmetric.