Deep Time And Human Ego
by Miki Saxon
I’ve written about deep thinking before; the kind of thinking that few have time for these days.
Even fewer have considered deep time, so I thought I’d share a wonderful article about someone who took the time to learn about something almost beyond human comprehension.
The Oldest Living Things project was motivated not by a narrow interest or a traditional scientific question, but by the idea of something called deep time. Deep time is not a precise demarcation in the way that geologic eras and cosmological epochs are. Rather, it’s a framework in which to consider timescales too long for our shallow, physical experience, and too big for our brains to process meaningfully. And why should they be able to? The earliest modern humans had a life expectancy of around 32 years. What evolutionary need would they have had to comprehend what 10,000 years felt like? What I wanted to do was to find or forge something relatable, something to help process and internalize deep time in a meaningful way: to feel expanses of time that we were not designed to feel.
How easily can you grasp the fact that this tree is just shy of 10,000 years old?
You may be wondering what’s the point? Why worry about something so far beyond the reach of the human mind?
Partly because the tech world is hyper-focused on finding a route to immortality.
But mainly, especially in light of that effort, because it’s a way to rein in the astounding egocentricity of our species.
Deep time is like deep water: We are constantly brought back to the surface, pulled by the wants and needs of the moment. But like exercising any sort of muscle, the more we access deep time, the more easily accessible it becomes, and the more likely we are to engage in long-term thinking. The more we embrace long-term thinking, the more ethical our decision-making becomes.
After all, meaning is not made of lone facts, lone people, or lone disciplines, nor is it found in the valuing of the objective over the subjective. Rather, meaning comes by way of knitting together a bigger picture, filled with color and texture, and meant to be felt and understood. We most fully understand what we can internalize—that which becomes part of us. The importance of specializing can’t be discarded, but working only within one discipline and strictly adhering to its rules is likely only to generate one kind of work, one kind of result.
We very well might end up missing the forest for the trees.
Think about it.
Image credit: Bored Panda
