Category : Articles

Sub Category : World

        Friedrich Nietzsche claimed, “Without music, life would be meaningless.” In other words, music is life. Through my experience, nothing could relate more to music than the natural workings of life, particularly our perception of time. 

        Throughout recorded history, there have been three distinct ways humans have perceived time. Each of these shared outlooks would determine how things would occur through our collective unconscious. 

        In chaotic-time, everything happens at random, and any effort to place meaning to their succession is hopeless. Such was the perspective of primitive man but seems to be the perspective we are being pushed into today, with younger generations yelling things like, “YOLO!” (You Only Live Once!), as well as corporations wanting us to “Just Do It.” It’s no different from how a child views the world. It is reckless and indicates a lack of connectivity, which in turn dissolves a society. Without laws like cause and effect or karma being linked with time, people couldn’t be held responsible for their actions. The obligations of parents to children lose all legitimacy, as well as commitments to our neighbors and community.

        Linear time is the unilateral perspective of “progress,” which took some time to catch on due to only a tiny clerical elite in Medieval Europe understanding it. Centuries later, the Age of Enlightenment had transmuted Christian linearism into a secular faith. By the late 19th century, with the Industrial Revolution, the western dogma of “history-as-progress” had split into religious doctrine, positivist dogma, and evolutionary science, where nobody was allowed to question. Modern-day thinking falls under this linear time perception, where the general belief is that we are constantly evolving, along with the naïve notion of it being "progress."

        If we look back at the last several decades, with IQ test scores on a steady decline, suicide rates on the rise, particularly with teenagers, the sudden drop in atention spans, and the fact that a growing number of people now believe the earth is flat, progress may not be the right term. Although there are many other examples to list, I need to stop myself there in order to avoid making this a political piece. 

        Well, if parents feeding their own child hormone supplements because little Johnny came home from school one day thinking he was born in the wrong body isn't progress, what are we left with? What else is there?

(To Be Continued...)