“The partial shortcoming of chaotic time is that it dissolves society’s connective tissue.”
BY REBECCA SANDBERG
Of all the cycles known to man, the human life cycle is perhaps the one we know best. Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe, in their mesmerizing, prophetic book, Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, earnestly state:
No other force – not class, not nationality, not culture, not technology – has as predictable a chronology. The limiting length of an active life cycle is one of civilization’s great constants. Biologically, a human life consists of four phases: childhood, young adulthood, midlife, and elderhood.
We don't choose our time. Time chooses us. On the nature of our being bound to time and its cycles, Strauss and Howe insightfully offer "time's" etymology. They write:
Etymologically, the word time comes from "tide" – an ancient reference to the lunar cycle still retained in such expressions as yuletide and good tidings. Similarly, the word period originally meant “orbit”, as in “planetary period.” The word year and hours come from the same root as the Greek, horos, meaning solar period. The word month is a derivative of moon.
Chaotic Time
Of the way humans used to see time, they define three useful paradigms: chaotic, cyclical, and linear. Of chaotic time, they write:
In chaotic time, history has no path. Events follow one another randomly and any effort to impute meaning…is hopeless. This was the first intuition of aboriginal man for whom change in the natural world was utterly beyond human control or comprehension. The partial shortcoming of chaotic time is that it dissolves society’s connective tissue.
Cyclical Time
Cyclical time originated when the ancients first linked natural cycles of planetary events with related cycles of human activity. In a robust dialogue regarding the nature of cyclical time as a new dimension, they write:
Cyclical time conquered chaos by repetition. Unlike chaotic time, cyclical time endowed classical societies with a prescribed moral dimension, a measure by which each generation could compare its behavior with that of its ancestors.
(...)
Cyclical time values patience, ritual, the relatedness of parts to the whole, and the healing power of time-within nature.
Linear Time
With the rise of technological advancement, humans are now generally and greatly disassociated from the cycles, seasons, and rhythms of time - though still ruled by them. Recognizing the difficulty of living natural, cycle-based lives in modernity, Strauss and Howe add:
We use technology to flatten the very physical evidence of natural cycles. With artificial light, we believe we defeat the sleep-wake cycle, with climate control, the seasonal cycle, with refrigeration, the agricultural cycle; and with high-tech medicine, the rest-recovery cycle.
Perhaps linear time leaves us alone, restless, and afraid to stand still. Perhaps, only through endurance can time reveal the enduring myths that define who we are.