Aymara concept of time - Wordsmith.org

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>>see the past as a panorama in front<<

As did Merlin, who travels backward in time (toward the past) in The Once and Future King. [Note to self: Time to re-read that favorite. ]

I re-read that not too long ago. What a great book! Merlin's curious reverse-time-line adds richness to the novel that I only appreciated on re-reading. Like when young Wart first spies Merlin, and Merlin seems unhappy. On first reading this didn't make an impression on me, but on re-reading I realized that to Merlin, what has just happened is he's said goodbye to Arthur and he knows he will never see him again. I get choked up thinking about it every time. *sniff*

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This is very interesting. I'm trying to imagine the past in the front and the future in the back and I find it difficult.

The concept makes sense, you lived the past, you've seen it, so it is in front where you're eyes face. But our whole system of thinking "looks" forward.

Picture yourself riding in the back of a station wagon, in a rear-facing seat. You can't see where you're going, but you can see where you've been. So the future is what is behind you, literally, and the past is what is before your eyes, to be known and commented upon.

Once while fishing (and not catching many fish) I tried to decide how a flowing stream best represented the flow of time. I decided it depended on the point of view. To me, wading in the creek, the future was upstream, where water molecules were on their way to flow past me eventually. To a boat coming downstream (or a water molecule), the future was further downstream and the past was upstream. I highly recommend this sort of musing on days when the fish aren't biting.

Heraclitus: Time is like a river flowing downstream. And you cannot step in the same river twice.

Mrs. Heraclitus: Don't be an ass, Heraclitus. Of course you can step in the same river twice. All you have to do is go downstream at the same rate that the river is flowing..

Heraclitus was amazed! He ran down to the river Styx and put his foot in. Then he ran downstream and put his foot in again and he ran downstream and put his foot in again, and again, and again, until he reached the Aegean Sea and he drowned.

(With thanks to Severn Darden)

Nary a timpu in sight.

So, the linguists could be wrong, their informants may have lied, or there may be more than one dialect of Aymara. Maybe Mrs Herakleitos can help. Of course, the dictionary could be wrong or abridged. Nayra (glossed as 'eye') isn't in the online dictionary either. No eye to be seen.

what do dandelions have to do with this? (tampopo?)

what do dandelions have to do with this

I was thinking of time as being a little like the Happiness Machine in Dandelion Wine or the slurpy ramen in Juzo Itami's film. Mount Tam(alpais) and German slang for butt figured in somehow, too. And the staid lion chews through el tiempo noshingly.

thanks--i hadn't thought of the time as element in tampopo, but then, every time i watch, it i see things i missed the last time.my sister lives in Japan, and i slowly gain insight to elements of japanese culture from her, (and from reading). i have visited there once, but spent more time visiting family than sight seeing (but i did do a fair amount of sightseeing --considering i don't speak any japanese!

i don't know about the happiness machine in Dandelion Wine --but the song Dandelion Wine does deal with memories, and times past (is there something special about dandeleon wine and nostalgia?--never had any)

it does seem like we travel backwards through life.. hindsight is 20/20, but we are blind to the future.

Alex, your fishing musings echoed precisely what the study showed: that how you look at it ...depends, it turns out, on whether they�re picturing themselves as being in motion relative to time or time itself as moving. If you're standing in the stream, the "future" comes to you, but if you're on a boat you're moving towards the future.

I don't know anything about the Aymara peoples' culture, but it seems to me that, for people who may believe that they have no control over what happens to them; that the future will be whatever God's or the Fates' will is, it would make perfect sense that there is no point in trying to see into it; it would be like trying to see behind themselves.

Fascinating article, Anna--thank you for posting it!

It may be worth a wander through this book by Robert Levine:

A Geography of Time

BTW, if history was a fall, then the future should be down and the past up. ;-)

I'm reading Diane Ackerman's An Alchemy of Mind. She quotes various folk at the beginning of each chapter. Her quote for Chapter 13, What Is a Memory, is:

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What sort of future is coming up from behind I don't 
really know.  But the past, spread out ahead, dominates 
everything in sight.
               --Robert M. Pirsig,
                 [i]Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance[/i]

Anyone can tell you what time it is. But who can tell you what is time? (Val�ry)

nobody here, that's for sure! (ron obvious)

Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio. Dixit Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis.

(Quoth Austin: "What is time therefore? If nobody asks it of me, I know what it is; if I wish to explain it to somebody who asks, I don't know.")

Margaret Visser in "Beyond Fate" talks about not only our tendancy to use geographic metaphors for time but how that limits or directs our thinking about and definition of time. Metaphors are used to give use a simplified definition or description as a symbol of the real thing. Time is a road that we stand upon with the future before us and the past behind us.
The problem is that using a metaphor too much allows us to forget that it is a simplified image not an accurate one. A road for example is a solid, concrete (or tarmac) object that is fixed in place. Whether or not you have travelled on it before it starts at town A and ends at town B and - barring earthquakes and bulldozers - always will. The risk then is to see time as having the same simple nature. The suspicion/feeling/belief that our future is set as firmly as our past.
Exploring another cultures concept of time may help us to understand more about the actual rather that resting on our metaphors.

Quote:the essence of "time" is it's "progression"
Parm my beg to differmints but that "progression" is purely linguistic and is derived from our conception of time. It has nothing to do with time's nature

I agree with Faldage The difficulty in any explanation is our individual perception of time. And it's so varied! Myself, I think of time like the air, invisible but all around us. We "see" it in it's effect as we "see" the wind when tree branches move or when things blow about.
And sometimes we get a glimpse of the future --- usually when we are not trying --- maybe that's ESP.
There! now the cat's among the pigeons!

to see the future, it to be trapped--

once you see the future, and expect that future to be true, you are forever closing down millions of pathways

the future is like a dandelion head 1000 wisps, chose one, latch onto it, and you follow that path.. all the other wisps, gone with the wind..

but until the moment you chose 1 wisp, 1000 choices are available. (and once you make a choice, its like landing on another dandelion head, 1000 new choice appear.

to know the future, is to be trapped by that path, to lose free will. sages through the ages realized that.

Deidre, a classic celtic tale, starts out with all of Deidre's life being fortold.. the civil wars, the death, the loss, her banishment and punishment.. all told.. and all come to pass. deirdre find freedom in her death.. the one event that has not been fortold.

or read Dune.(same idea, that to know the future is not a blessing, but a trap.)

that to know the future is not a blessing, but a trap Wow. That's pretty profound. But what if, like in Terminator 2 and some Star Trek episodes, just because you get a glimpse of one particular future, that doesn't mean it IS going to happen; that you do in fact still have choices? Oh, Einstein, where are you now?!

And what if, like I've seen so much of in the Ann Landers/agony aunt type columns about infidelity: don't you think that if it ever became possible for us to decide whether we want to know what our future would be, that, like in the newspaper columns, there'd be some people who would want to know, and some who wouldn't?

Count me as a wouldn't. What is the point or wrapping paper if you know what's in the parcel?

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Count me as a wouldn't. What is the point or wrapping paper if you know what's in the parcel?

To mark the occasion and make it a special gift. Even if at the giver's request I have given explicit instructions about what I want for my birthday I still want it wrapped rather than just thrust naked at me (except where the present intrinsically involves naked thrusting, of course).

to see the future, it to be trapped--
once you see the future, and expect that future to be true, you are forever closing down millions of pathways
I understand what you're saying and agree- in part - but I believe you are defining time in a way that applies to an individual and that "glimpse" might well be a wish or something similar and it is indeed easy to close off other avenues because the "glimpse" is appealing.
I meant that it might be possible to have a glimpse of the future that is not personal, or even envisionable otherwise.

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So you saying if we agree that this baseball bat is made of foam rubber it won't hurt when I whup you upside the head with it?

Has it come to this, Faldage? Have you become so jaded by life that you can no longer abide philosophical discussion without interjecting your passion "baseball" into the conversation to keep your once-sharp mind awake and alert?

WELL?

Oh well, I guess Faldage has dozed off.

Well then, just for the record I, myself, will explain what would have happened if Faldage had hit me upside the head with a baseball bat...simply put he would have been put in prison for ten years at hard labor with time counted off for good behavior.

Good behavior? Not likely with Faldage, but in prison Mister Faldage would then have ample time to contemplate fully this simple aspect of the meaning of the concept of time...

No matter if he and I had agreed that a baseball bat was made of foam rubber, the meaning of words are determined by the culture that is the unit that goes forth through time. Poor Faldage, and worse, poor me, are merely crusty skin cells that are shucked off innocuously as the larger unit goes on to Disneyland or Happy Farms or whatever its fate might be.

Words have no absolute meaning, Faldage, words only have function

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Words have no absolute meaning, Faldage, words only have function

Exactamenticals. Time means nothing, or, in the words of the old Aladamnbamian philosopher:

What's time to a pig?

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Exactamenticals. Time means nothing, or, in the words of the old Aladamnbamian philosopher:

What's time to a pig?

Gee Phaldotage, when Alabamdamna homespun philosophers ask "What is time to a pig?" it is meant to be rhetorical. The stock answer is "The same as it is to a man."

All time is biological.

Pigs sit, time passes, and they get hungry.
Humans sit, time passes, and they get hungry.

And the same mechanism is in play for pig and man if we substitute the word "horny" for "hungry".

Now, just for kicks let's try a mind experimentt...

Gather up some newly born babies and see that they are properly raised by apes without contact with human Culture or language.
Then, when they reach their majority, round them up and put them in a cage and ask them "What is time?

Their growls and grunts will be equal to our long winded explanations about the nature of time.

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I'm reading Diane Ackerman's An Alchemy of Mind. She quotes various folk at the beginning of each chapter. Her quote for Chapter 13, What Is a Memory, is:

"What sort of future is coming up from behind I don't
really know. But the past, spread out ahead, dominates
everything in sight."
--Robert M. Pirsig,
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

-

Great book, but the sentiment expressed by Pirsig above is analogous prose without logical semantical function. Time is progressive. The memory of the event is not the event and that memory occurs in the present and then influences the future.

And while we can construct worthwhile allegorical concepts like "time stood still" and "backwards in time", the essence of "time" is it's "progression" and to use the term otherwise requires the complete obliteration of the meaning of the word and the creation of an altogether new meaning for the term "time".

Zen and the art... is about a man showing his past to his son, whom he hasn't seen due to being locked up in a mental institution - the past being the roads of America, the future being the son, whom he desires to get to know, sitting behind him on the motorcycle. So there is nothing wrong with the image. Read the book again - it's a teacher.

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to see the future, it to be trapped--

once you see the future, and expect that future to be true, you are forever closing down millions of pathways

the future is like a dandelion head 1000 wisps, chose one, latch onto it, and you follow that path.. all the other wisps, gone with the wind..

but until the moment you chose 1 wisp, 1000 choices are available. (and once you make a choice, its like landing on another dandelion head, 1000 new choice appear.

to know the future, is to be trapped by that path, to lose free will. sages through the ages realized that.

Deidre, a classic celtic tale, starts out with all of Deidre's life being fortold.. the civil wars, the death, the loss, her banishment and punishment.. all told.. and all come to pass. deirdre find freedom in her death.. the one event that has not been fortold.

or read Dune.(same idea, that to know the future is not a blessing, but a trap.)

can anybody choose differently from what they do? WHEN they do?

We employ procrastination and rashness to express beliefs about acting in order to survive. Thus choosing is seen as a matter of gef�hl with events/options and Self - a melt of remembered choices becoming experiences and projected trajectories stemming from those memories projected into time-not-lived to converge at a desired result. Hopefully. Or the lunatic's way ;-) utter trust - acceptance that things become what they become; rolling with the ball and making the best of it.

It's all a matter of attitude and character. The point being that one chooses, and WHEN, as one IS. Choosing then is the amalgamation of doing and being - the convergence in the now that makes destiny, as one's actions ripple into the universe.

Wow. Welcome aBoard, pipanny (she said, struggling not to think of you as piepan). I'm impressed. We do occasionally go off into philosophical-type discussions. I like this one so far.

So--are you saying that, because each individual is who he or she is, we really don't have a choice in how we cope with our surroundings? To dictate our future, that is, as far as we're able (i.e., other than acts of God, for ex.)?

> What's time to a pig?

Well, quite. If one can agree on that, then the next logical step might be to bow out of the linear history that continues to act as a culturally unifying norm. But clearly this will take more time and some decent models. The calendar makers are busy.

the next logical step might be to bow out of the linear history And do what, Sweet Thing?

Hi Pipanny. I'm still digesting what you said but welcome.

Jackie if you decide to "bow out of the linear history " take a hammock and a strawberry lemonade with you.

The trick for me is to remember that linear is a (simplified) description of history/time rather than a complete definition of it.

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can anybody choose differently from what they do? WHEN they do?

We employ procrastination and rashness to express beliefs about acting in order to survive. Thus choosing is seen as a matter of gef�hl with events/options and Self - a melt of remembered choices becoming experiences and projected trajectories stemming from those memories projected into time-not-lived to converge at a desired result. Hopefully. Or the lunatic's way ;-) utter trust - acceptance that things become what they become; rolling with the ball and making the best of it.

It's all a matter of attitude and character. The point being that one chooses, and WHEN, as one IS. Choosing then is the amalgamation of doing and being - the convergence in the now that makes destiny, as one's actions ripple into the universe.

Fine sounding words, but the problem, pipanny, is in directing your rippling towards a raison d'etre. Poor mankind. He has been shoved onstage during the second act of a three act play and he doesn't know the lines. He knows the language but he doesn't know the plot and denouement, so he wings it.

We all are hard wired to operate in a universe with a directional (progressive) system of time. The paradox involved is that directional time requires a beginning. This we can't conceptualize. And unsatisfactorly, this leaves us to speculate that time is non-directional. But if time is, in fact, non-directional then we must conclude that all things happened at once and so the idea of progressive time itself must be an illusion.

Poor me, poor you, poor mankind.

But if time is, in fact, non-directional then we must conclude that all things happened at once and so the idea of progressive time itself must be an illusion.
I watched a documentary the other night which explained string theory in siplified language and images. Not simple enough for me, apparently. It seems there may or may not be little strings which might rush around calming down sub-atomic non-particles and repairing tiny tears in space/time while allowing yesterday to have happened both before and after today and possibly but not necessarily simultaneously with it.

What do they smoke in physics class?

What everybody seems to be missing here, and alluding to the station wagon metaphor, is that, even if you visualize yourself facing the past with your back turned on the future, you are still moving forward into the future backwards; you are still leaving the past behind you, even though you are facing it.

If the Aymara just see themselves turned around, but still moving forward into the future and leaving the past behind, then there's really no difference.

Go ahead Whitman, allude to the station wagon metaphor; make my day.

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What everybody seems to be missing here, and alluding to the station wagon metaphor, is that, even if you visualize yourself facing the past with your back turned on the future, you are still moving forward into the future backwards; you are still leaving the past behind you, even though you are facing it.

If the Aymara just see themselves turned around, but still moving forward into the future and leaving the past behind, then there's really no difference.

The car might could be going forward in time, but If I'm facing the other way, I'm going backward.

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The car might could be going forward in time, but If I'm facing the other way, I'm going backward.

Foolish me. In my haste I read the line above as...

The World may be going forward in time, but faldage is going backwards.

Honest mistake.

The car might could be going forward in time, but If I'm facing the other way, I'm going backward.

Yes...but you're still going forward backwards.

>>>Yes...but you're still going forward backwards.

>>>What do they smoke in physics class?

In physices class, or here?

"We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future."

- McLuhan