Time and Place: Television of Our Minds

This article explores the complex relationship between time, place, and human consciousness, highlighting the diverse ways in which these concepts are perceived across cultures and eras. The author emphasizes that our contemporary understanding of time is linear and limited, which impacts our perception of reality and our connections with nature and heritage. He points to the need to return to a more holistic view of the world, one that considers the cyclical and spiritual aspects of our existence, rather than relying solely on prosaic, linear thinking.Place is perceived differently by people living at the same time: a farmer, a city dweller, a traveler, an archaeologist, a thief, a geologist, a Gypsy, a poet, a painter, and so on. How place was experienced by people in different eras remains a matter of conjecture. Linear time—past, present, future—is a fiction. It is linked to the sense of self, and therefore, to the ego. Place, in turn, is linked to property, heritage, and money, as well as to collective or kinship.

Our contemporary sense of time and place is deeply entwined with nationalism—or rather, the National Socialism of "Land and Blood," fueled by the romanticized Arthurian myth, the vision of a "Celtic England," or the benign, folk notion of "heritage" (in France, encompassing the entire ethos encapsulated in the word patrimoine). But this is "national" care, not human care. The term itself speaks volumes about the prevailing notion of the unity of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Time and place are inevitably political. We tend to seek vision in an idealized past, while simultaneously plundering the planet in the present—thus rendering the future irrelevant. We should embrace trees, curb our own waste, and transform our Paleolithic consciousness, rather than treat the landscape as "heritage" or a nostalgic stroll. How many of us have a grove in our garden to celebrate nature within?

How did Roman slaves perceive Tuscany? How did Etruscans or Syrians view the Roman Empire? How did early Christians view the desert? How do different English, Irish, Russians, and Senegalese perceive the sea? What did the Anglo-Saxons think of Stonehenge? These seemingly simple questions can only be partially answered, and only after years or even generations of research. The questions we ask about time and place today are perverse.

The main problem is that these questions embody a historical myth—an image of the past created by people of the present. The Victorians envisioned grandiose plans and concepts of uniformity. After the collapse of Christian totalitarianism during the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment, a new, all-encompassing explanation of reality was sought. The result was Gibbon, Carlyle, Frazer, Darwin, Freud, and thousands of other thinkers. Previously, people believed that time was subordinate to God's Will—from the Fall to the creation of the New Jerusalem. The Victorians, on the other hand, viewed history as a linear process—from "primitive" to mastery and prosperity.

Wordsworth and other Romantics adopted a different perspective: they recognized that man had fallen from a state of original glory and could only return to it through simplicity, integrity, and honesty. Marx adopted this Romantic view of history, while Schopenhauer, Hegel, Nietzsche, and their successors adopted a progressive perspective. These are two sides of the same post-medieval coin, differing only in degree and proportion.