Inter-generational Dyschronia

Dischronometria (sometimes abbreviated to dyschronia) is a dysfunction in which the individual is unable to estimate the amount of time which has passed. Although usually applied to individuals, does our culture show signs of inter-generational dyschronia?

There certainly appear to be signs that our culture does so. Being unable to accurately assess the amount of time that has passed, we also seem incapable of fully appreciating the changes that have taken place over that period. Notably, we seem to be unable to recognise the amount of change that has taken place in the epochs and ages before our individual births.

The pictures that accompany this blogpiece illustrate how dyschronia can distort our ability to identify changes over time periods extending beyond our own individual lifetimes.

Our lifetimes, when measured against the aeons of earth history, are fleeting. Without the ability to step back from our limited lifeline it is very easy to miss the significance of change.

Even when the pace of change occurs exponentially we can miss the significance because we are only witnessing a very small slice of time. We then project that slice onto our own relatively short lifetime, much the same way as a single frame of a movie gives us only a fragment of the entire movie.

Why is this?

A couple of graphs may help to demonstrate. 

Fig 1 shows the graph of an exponential function. As the graph shows, although growth starts out fairly evenly after a period of time the slope of the curve begins to steepen, and then steepens very fast.

This graph is a representational one and, on the x-axis, suggests a timeline stretching from 2000 BCE through to 2000CE and beyond. Nothing specifically is depicted by the curve. It is simply an indication showing what happens under exponential growth. It could be any of the following: population, resource use, carbon emissions, species extinction, etc.

The blue sided rectangle is intended to represent an individual lifetime. (Please note that this is not to scale.)

Fig 2 is the rectangle in Fig 1 extracted and stretched along an x-axis commensurate with the x-axis of Fig 1. This is to symbolise how an individual lifetime is perceived versus that of some 4000 years.

The first thing to notice is that the gradient of the curve in Fig 2 is significantly flatter than that of Fig 1. Thus, when change is viewed simply against one’s own lifetime, any change may seem to be linear and not changing especially quickly.

To push the metaphor further, it can be noted that against the background, the width of the curve in Fig 2 is much greater than it is in Fig 1. We could interpret this to mean that the individual whose life course this depicts views themselves as more significant than is suggested in Fig 1.

Without stepping back and seeing a wider picture, our sense of time can become condensed into the years that have elapsed since our birth and maybe a decade or two before that if we listened to the stories of our parents, uncles, aunts, and grandparents.

The danger in this way of perceiving time and the changes that occur is that we miss how significant those changes are and hence, fail to act in ways that prevent or forestall any hazardous changes.

Those who are able to stand back and look at a longer timeframe are able to notice the steepness of the curves of exponential growth. Sadly, it seems, when these hazards are pointed out, many will deny the hazard because they are viewing time only from within their own narrow timespan.

Sigh!