Time-Blinkered: Opening Our Understanding of the Long View

“What drew you to the idea of deep time and long-term thinking?” That opening question by Long Now Board Member George Gantz ignited a 90-minute, wide-ranging conversation with guests Richard Fisher and Vincent Ialenti. Richard shared a personal story – he liked collecting rocks as a kid, and he remembers his Dad asking him to bring a rock home from the different places he travelled.

That connection grew into a passion for geology, and an understanding that every rock, nor matter how unremarkable, contains a story reaching back thousands, millions, even billions of years. Vincent, ever since he was a little kid, had always loved being in nature. He learned, through geology and later anthropology, that every landscape, every place, has a unique presence, often holding both natural and human history. He still loves exploring nature, and he imagines the flows of time across the places he visits – what was this like in the past, in the way past, in truly deep time – and what will it be in the future. 

These experiences give them an appreciation of what is lost, for people and for culture, when the pressing anxieties of immediate concerns drown out the resonance of the deep connections that surround us. Deep time thinking is an antidote to short-termism, a way of becoming rooted, of experiencing connection and of finding meaning in the turbulence of the modern world. Richard and Vincent both offered many examples, in art, in culture, in small communities and in institutions, where deep time thinking is thriving.

If short-termism originates in personal preoccupations and loss of attention, there are features of the modern world that exacerbate this natural tendency. During Richard’s career in journalism, he feels that the drive to attract attention has become ever more important and the values of credibility and veracity ever less. All media is now tethered to the money that flows when eyeballs (and the purchasing power they represent) are attracted to whatever feeds their anxiety. However, these technologies are all new, and we can, and will, hopefully, learn to resist the allure of the short term and to seek out more meaningful information and community connections. 

Some historical examples of deep time thinking, such as the pyramids of Egypt, great mosques and monuments around the world, and the cathedrals of Europe, seem to share a fascination with answering the question posed by human mortality.  George asked "how does deep time thinking help us hold this question?" The simple answer seems to be that the deeper we feel connected to past, present and future, the less we are concerned about our own death. In another sense, a meaningful life infused with a deep time perspective makes every life worth living.