The New Paradigm
vol. I, Number 26

Dear Friends,

My favorite quote about "time" is an observation by Marx (Groucho, that is, not any other Marx who may have crossed your mind). "Time flies like an arrow," Marx said; "fruit flies like a banana."

Well, that's neither here nor there, I suppose, but as what follows could be very interesting or very tedious, depending upon your particular turn of mind, I thought I'd lead off with an attempt at humor, just for a little change of pace.

Time, if you stop to think about it, is a very mysterious "thing," ah, if that's the word I want. What sort of "thing" is time, anyway? We think of time as "passing," either quickly or slowly, depending on our disposition. Under some circumstances, a minute or an hour can seem like an eternity; yet weeks and months, and years even, can seem to "pass" virtually in the blink of an eye. Lately, time seems to be speeding up, rushing by like an express train. I used to think it was just because I'm getting older; but my children remark at it too. Have you noticed? What's going on?

The idea developed last time (tnp vol. I #25, 6/2/98) in particular, and in prior and subsequent editions as well, that existence has no opposite, and consequently that there is no "death," puts "time" into a different perspective than is habitual in traditional "old paradigm" thought patterns. We're in the habit, are we not, of thinking of "time" mostly in terms of the anticipated duration of a "Human Life-time," something on the order of "four score and some" years; or possibly a century. Anything older than a century is an "antique," is "really old," is "history." But if we start thinking of ourselves as "never dying," as "eternal Cosmic Beings," we may be able to step back in our minds from the immediate present, and take in a broader sweep of "time."

To that end, I am now going to take you on an imaginary excursion through "time;" or at least that fraction of "time" during which Life has been, or is believed to have been resident on planet Earth: a matter of some 3.8 billion, or milliard (3,800,000,000) years, or revolutions of Earth about the Sun.

Imagine, if you will, a "model Solar System" which is just like the one in which we live, with the single exception that planet Earth is orbiting the Sun at the rate of 60 rpm. (revolutions per minute); and of course the rest of the Solar System is moving proportionately. That is, the scale of "time" has been altered such that the unit of time we identify as a "year" has the duration in our imaginary model of what we know as a "second." For the purposes of our model, in other words, one "model-year" = one "actual second." This imaginary time compression will make it possible for us to contemplate what we usually think of as vast stretches of "time" in terms of durations that are somewhat more immediately comprehensible to our Earthly human experience.

For instance; as I mentioned, life is believed to have made its appearance upon the face of the Earth at just about the earliest moment it was possible for living organisms of any (biological) kind to survive here: about 3.8 billion years ago, when the young planet had cooled sufficiently to allow liquid water to condense upon its surface. This, of course, is only surmise; but it is supported by the evidence of vast iron oxide deposits dating from this era, at a time when no free oxygen is believed to have been present in the primordial atmosphere. Without oxygen, iron oxide is difficult to explain - unless certain biological organisms were also present; in particular, one pedomicrobium, a bacterium that "feeds" upon metal compounds and produces metallic oxides as a byproduct.

This theory of course runs afoul of the scientific dogma that life originated "by accident" on planet Earth; and you'll have to await a later edition of tnp for a discussion of that. In any event, if by surmise or caprice we peg the origin of Life on Earth at 3.8 billion years ago, our model can represent the time as 3.8 billion seconds ago, or approximately 120.4 "actual years" before the present moment. If, for the sake of round numbers and even numbers of years, we set the "present moment" somewhat arbitrarily at "twelve o'clock, Midnight (00:00:00), 1 January 2000," that would put the modeled origin of Life on Earth somewhere in the vicinity of "31 July 1879," or 3.8 billion seconds "ago."

O.k. so far? This is known geologically as the "Early Precambrian Era." It is followed in turn by the "Middle Precambrian Era," and the "Late Precambrian Era," a matter, taken all together, of some 3.2 billion, or milliard (3,230,000,000) years - or seconds in our imaginary model. This takes us up to what geologists and paleontologists have named the "Paleozoic Era," which dawned about 570 million years ago - seconds ago for our model, or about "8 December 1981." "Not so long ago," is it, when we replace years with seconds? But it puts the scale of proportionate time into a more comprehensible perspective.

The Paleozoic Era is divided geologically into six Periods: in case you're interested, the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian; covering a span of some 345 million years, and came to an end about 225 million years ago with the dawn of the Mesozoic Era, the so-called "Age of the Dinosaurs." For our model, the Mesozoic Era began about "13 November 1992."

Like the Paleozoic Era, the Mesozoic is divided into Periods: the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous. The Cretaceous is now widely believed to have been brought to an end 65 million years ago by an asteroid or comet impact near what is today known as Yucatan. If so, its counterpart would have struck our model Earth on or about "9 December 1997."

The Mesozoic is followed by the Cenozoic Era, which is divided into the Tertiary and Qarternary Periods; which are divided in turn into seven successive Epochs. Geology and paleontology get more complex, the closer they come to the "present moment" - doubtless because more detailed information is available about them than about earlier Eras and Periods. Also, the time divisions come at closer and closer intervals. There is enough detailed information about the Cenozoic Era, the past 65 million years, to fill many libraries, so I'll only mention one or two points of interest in passing.

The most salient feature of the Cenozoic is its hosting the "Age of Mammals" - which, being Mammals ourselves, is naturally of keen interest to we Humans. Interestingly, however, although Humans pride ourselves upon our intelligence and our large brains, we are neither the largest-brained Beings on the planet, nor the oldest large-brained creatures. By far, the largest-brained creature on Earth is the so-called "Sperm Whale," Physeter catodon or P. macrocephalus, with a brain weighing in at between 17 and 20 lb. (7.7 to 9 kg). This compares with about 3 lb. (1.36 kg) for, as we like to call ourselves, Homo sapiens sapiens ("wise, wise Man"). The Sperm Whale has been pushing his big brain through the world's oceans for about the past 26 million years (since about "5 March 1999" in our model); whereas we can trace the current anatomy of our brain back to only about 40 or 50,000 years ago ("10:06 to 12:53, 31 December 1999" in our model). Speculations about what P. catodon may have been thinking about with shim's huge brain for the past 26 million years will also have to await a future edition of tnp; but we may presume shim must be using it for something. Otherwise, how could it possibly have been perpetuated, generation after generation, for the past 26 million years? But onward.

After traversing this immense span of time, comprising the whole Natural History of Biological Life on Earth, we must penetrate to the "last hour of the last day of the last year of the 20th century" before we can model what we presume to label "History." The legendary Sack of Troy chronicled in the Iliad of Homer, and the Exodus of Moses out of Egypt, may have been approximately contemporaneous events around the year -1200; or "23:06:40, 31 December 1999" for our model. The 6th century B.C. is remarkable in Human History for having hosted the persons of Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Lao Tzu, the Hebrew Prophets, and the Classical Greek Poets, Philosophers and Artists - "between 23:16:40 and 23:18:20 the last day of 1999." The great division of historical time between "B.C." and "A.D." falls in our model at "26 minutes, 40 seconds into the final hour of the final day." The Western Roman Empire came to an end in the year 476; or "34 minutes, 36 seconds after the hour." The Norman Conquest of Britain is dated to the Battle of Hastings in 1066; at "23:44:26." Columbus "discovered" the Western Hemisphere in 1492 (although there were numerous people on the Planet who already knew of its existence); at "23:51:32." The American Declaration of Independence of 1776 was signed "224 seconds ago" at "23:56:16." And the fabled and legendary "20th Century," in which so much of Human History has occurred with rapidly mounting cascades of Human events, occupies the "final 100 seconds," or "one minute and 40 seconds" of our model's allotment of "compressed time."

Such are the proportions of Earthly "time." It is evident we place a disproportionate emphasis upon the thinnest oil slick, so to speak, floating at the top of a column of "time" that delves deep into our disremembered past. It is also clear that we exist now; and existing, have never, ever "non-existed," either during or before the period delineated above. If we cannot remember the events of our interminable past, nevertheless we experienced them, for we cannot have avoided them in the impossible state of "non-existence." We were "here," somehow, some way, which we may or may not be able to imagine; and our accumulated experience combines in what we find ourselves to be today. This is food for thought, is it not?

To round out this little excursion, I am now going to share with you a poem which speaks to these issues, and appeals to me on numerous levels. It's somewhat long, but I think you will enjoy it, particularly if you've maintained your interest this far in the preceding discussion. I believe the poem to be in the public domain.

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
In the Palaeozoic time,
And side by side, on the ebbing tide,
We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
For I loved you even then.

Mindless we lived and mindless we loved,
And mindless at last we died;
And deep in a rift of the Caradoc drift,
We slumbered side by side.
The world turned on in the lathe of Time,
The hot lands heaved amain,
Till we cought our breath from the womb of death,
And crept into light again.

We were Amphibians, scaled and tailed,
And drab as a dead man's hand:
We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees,
Or trailed through the mud and sand,
Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet,
Writing a language dumb,
With never a spark in the empty dark
To hint at a life to come.

Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,
And happy we died once more:
Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold
Of a Neocomian shore.
The æons came and the æons fled,
And the sleep that wrapped us fast
Was riven away in a newer day,
And the night of death was past.

Then light and swift through the jungle trees
We swung in our airy flights;
Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms,
In the hush of the moonless nights.
And oh, what beautiful years were these,
When our hearts clung each to each;
When life was filled, and our senses thrilled
In the first faint dawn of speech!

Thus life by life, and love by love,
We passed through the cycles strange;
And breath by breath, and death by death,
We followed the chain of change;
Till there came a time in the law of life
When over the nursing sod
The shadows broke, and the soul awoke
In a strange, dim dream of God.

I was thewed like an Auroch bull,
And tusked like the great Cave Bear;
And you, my sweet, from head to feet,
Were gowned in your glorious hair.
Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,
When the nights fell o'er the plain,
And the moon hung red o'er the river bed,
We mumbled the bones of the slain.

I flaked a flint to a cutting edge,
And shaped it with brutish craft:
I broke a shank from the woodland dank,
And fitted it, head to haft.
Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn,
Where the Mammoth came to drink:
Through brawn and bone I drave the stone,
And slew him upon the brink.

Loud I howled through the moonless wastes,
Loud answered our kith and kin:
From west and east to the crimson feast
The clan came trooping in.
O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof,
We fought and clawed and tore,
And cheek by jowl, with many a growl,
We talked the marvel o'er.

I carved that fight on a reindeer bone,
With rude and hairy hand:
I pictured his fall on the cavern wall,
That men might understand.
For we lived by blood, and the right of might,
Ere human laws were drawn,
And the Age of Sin did not begin
Till our brutal tusks were gone.

And that was a million years ago,
In a time that no man knows;
Yet here tonight, in the mellow light,
We sit at Delmonico's.
Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,
Your hair as dark as jet:
Your years are few, your life is new,
Your soul untried, and yet -

Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay,
And the scarp of the Purbeck flags:
We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones,
And deep in the Coralline crags.
Our love is old, our lives are old,
And death shall come amain:
Should it come today, what man may say
We shall not live again?

God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds,
And furnished them wings to fly:
He sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn,
And I know that it shall not die;
Though cities have sprung above the graves
Where the crook-boned men made war,
And the ox-wain creeks o'er the buried caves,
Where the mummied Mammoths are.

For we know that the clod, by the grace of God,
Will quicken with voice and breath;
And we know that Love, with gentle hand,
Will beckon from death to death.
And so, as we linger at luncheon here,
Over many a dainty dish,
Let us drink anew to the time when you
Were a tadpole and I was a fish.

Remember?

Love & Light,

-- Harmon
J. Harmon Grahn