History and Celestial Time

[personalreality]

I'm not supporting any particular theory about 'transition of ages', but i've always felt that as a species we know very little about the cyclical nature of our greater reality (should that be the case).  As is addressed in this article, nearly every culture on earth that has stories or documented cosmologies speaks of cyclical time, of dark and golden ages moving with the precession of the equinoxes.  As disenchanted as we have become with this new age 2012 mess (stupid mainstream media, it was cool before you guys got it), it seems to me that it would be silly and irresponsible of us to ignore the ages of legends that we can still hear and read about today that propose a reality that moves in cycles.  Remember, we have a very geocentric perception about our reality, but existence is bigger than earth.

http://www.realitysandwich.com/history_and_celestial_time

[Stillwater]

It makes sense that many civilizations might think that, however; There are only so many choices about how to think about sequential time. The two big ones are cyclical periods, and complete linearity. The Abrahamic religions are all linear- they believe in a creation point, and in an eschaton to end things.

If you don't think of there being a begining or an end to time, then either you must think of time as being cyclical, or else imagine that every moment in time will be different from every other before, or at the very least that events have no pattern at all, and this is somewhat counter-intuitive, since there are forces in the universe that ensure that certain patterns are upheld, such as gravitational orbit.

Another rational reason for surmising that time might be cyclical is scaling up from smaller scale measurements of time. Days, seasons, years, solar-system relationships in planetary alignment, and the procession of the equinoxes all happen in cycles. It is only natural for a mathematical Hindu mind to think that perhaps these cycles, in many scales, are themselves units in even greater cycles, which are themselves units in ever larger cycles.

[personalreality]

Another rational reason for surmising that time might be cyclical is scaling up from smaller scale measurements of time. Days, seasons, years, solar-system relationships in planetary alignment, and the procession of the equinoxes all happen in cycles. It is only natural for a mathematical Hindu mind to think that perhaps these cycles, in many scales, are themselves units in even greater cycles, which are themselves units in ever larger cycles.

Agreed.  And that is a point that is mentioned in that article.  If we turn toward "nature" to seek "answers" then we find a cyclical existence.  The problem is one of individual experience.  I mean, I can see days turn and i can see seasons change, but my experience seems to be linear.  If there are cycles greater than my life that would give credence to a cyclical measurement of time it's hard for me to recognize them.  I could just assume that nature is where 'truth' lies, but that seems to go counter to my experience of cause and effect.  Perhaps humanity is linear and nature is cyclical.  Like maybe we exist in a different way than nature.  who knows.