Skip to main content

Looking forward to it

In the last few years since I completed grad school, I have been thinking about why history seems more difficult to reminisce than the future is to look forward to.

But this Economist blogpost from the other day highlights some new research in this area.
"They used to think that time does not have a direction, at least at the subatomic level, though they now agree that it does. Ordinary people, of course, have always known this. Nearly all cultures have a version of the arrow of time, a process by which they move towards the future and away from the past. According to a paper to be published in Psychological Science this has an interesting psychological effect. A group of researchers, led by Eugene Caruso of the University of Chicago, found that people judge the distance of events differently, depending on whether they are in the past or future." 
It's interesting how the psychology of time has been found to work similarly to the sound of moving objects. Events in times past seem "farther" than events in times to come. This raised a few questions for me:
  1. Does "Earthly time" differ from "mental time"?
  2. If there is a difference, what units are used for mental time?
  3. If mental time is directional, must it have a start and finish?
Coincidentally, I picked up Henry Corbin's Cyclical time and Ismaili Gnosis last night and started reading it. The beginning mentions this difference between time and Time. More on this later. 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tanzania is not Tasmania

Dear friends: Please let's stop refering to Tanzania as Tasmania. Here is why. Tanzania is located on the coast of East Africa, below Kenya. It is not origin of the the cartoon character from your childhood. Tasmania is an island which is part of Australia. The animal known to exist only on Tasmania is the Tasmanian Devil. Once again, you will see this is not the cartoon character you remember from your childhood. Let's summarize: Tanzania is not Tasmania.
Post a Comment
Read more

Policy Brief 2: Why is Tanzania Poor?

(Policy Brief # 2 Submitted December 6th 2007, for Econ 346 - Economic Development, Lafayette College) Over the course of the 20th century, Tanzania experienced a multitude of social, political and economic changes. It still remains poor today. The WorldBank classifies a ‘low income country’ – such as Tanzania – as one with a Gross National Income per capita of $905 or less (WorldBank Data 2006). As of 1992, Tanzania ’s per capita income was recorded at $110, and average per capita consumption was $0.5 per day (OECD 2000). Several possible factors have been blamed for contributing to current hardships, such as Julius Nyerere’s failed attempts to collectivize agriculture between 1961 and 1975 through his socialist Ujamaa policies as the first president of Tanzania (Pratt 1980). While pre-independence plans “focused on the commercialization of agriculture and the creation of industries that could reduce the need for a variety of imports”, post-independence interventions by the Gov...
4 comments
Read more

Serving up the fix

Originally published on Vijana FM | 22nd July 2012 On a recent album release by Nas called Life is Good , Anthony Hamilton sings “The world is an addiction / serving up a fix”. The track goes on to discuss the dangers of selling out in pursuit of irrational dreams; indeed, “you gain your life just to lose your soul”. Sometimes I wonder if Tanzania is losing her soul. Perhaps – as time passes – it is me growing more conscious, or media becoming more pervasive to drama. But it seems like this country is chasing grandeur that is alien to her history and at odds with what she needs today. Her history and her needs; what do these mean? For the purpose of this post, I am pointing to Tanzania’s historical pursuit to be an independent nation-state, free of international dues and reliance on help. I am also referring to her current state of affairs, mainly consisting of an inefficient system of education coupled with an unbalanced system of trade. There are a few example...
Post a Comment
Read more