Today, 2,750 years later, we tend to view the New Year
as a celebration of what is to come, as a time to look forward, often with
hope, to what is to come.
We have forgotten, or perhaps spurned, Janus’s backward-looking
gaze. We now focus all our attention upon the future. In our westernised
worldview the past is figuratively behind us, so that we can no longer see it.
Looking back is viewed mostly in a negative light. ‘Don’t look back,’ we hear,
‘Focus on the future. Look ahead.’
Time spoken of in this way is metaphorically perceived
as an arrow, always flying forward, towards the future. But not all cultures
and belief systems perceive time this way. For many traditional and
nature-based cultures time is more cyclic in nature.
Such cultures have no issue with looking back. Indeed,
even the concept of looking back is an alien notion to some. Time as a
cycle means that things repeat. They are not forgotten; they are not consigned
to the waste basket of the past.
A corollary of viewing time as cyclic, and the past
not forgotten, is that there is no place for one of the pillars of modernity –
the great belief and faith in Progress.
Where a cyclic conception of time finds ready
analogies in nature – the coming and going of the seasons, the ocean tides, the
opening and closing of flowers, day and night … - progress has no
analogies in nature. The author and poet, Ramon Elani, claims that progress ‘is
an artificial idea, reflected nowhere. It is contrary to the laws of nature.’1
The belief in progress steals from us our appreciation
of the present, even if only subtly. Progress informs us that things will be
better in the future, and we must strive for that better future. Embedded
within such a concept is the insidious image of a past that was worse than it
is now, and much worse than it could be. Our lives up to this point have been
stolen and we become smitten by a promise of a future of greater happiness.
Ironically, such thinking steals our future also.
Yet, it can be argued that the predicament within
which we find ourselves today is a direct consequence of … progress.
Specifically, it is the effect of thinking of, and creating, technologies that
are supposed to be of benefit. The arrow of time flies only toward the future,
our eyes are focussed only on the target.
Modernity tells us to keep looking forward, towards
the future, for that is where we will find our reward of happiness, prosperity,
and greater well-being.
However, when our eyes are rivetted towards this
future well-being we become blind to the glaringly obvious truth surrounding
us, here and now.
The truth that our well-being in the future depends,
not on our visions of the future, nor the innovations and technologies to come,
but on the quality of our relationships right here and now.
It is the quality of our relationships with each other
and the planet as a whole, in our present, that we should be focussing on.
And to do that, we may need a bit of backward looking.
Maybe somewhere, in times before now, there may have been wisdom in viewing
time cyclically.
Note:
1. Ramon Elani, Wyrd: Against the Modern World.
Night Forest Press, Canada, 2021.
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