Thought of Eternal Return
I forget in what context we brought up the "myth of the eternal return" in class last week, but my interest was peaked, and I googled it that afternoon. There are two big endorsers of this idea who's names frequented my search results: Mircea Eliade and Fredrich Neitzche. I found an excerpt from Eliade's book "The Myth of the Eternal Return" online that amused me:
Now those blockquotes are holding in some mind-boggling ideas about life and the universe- the same idea that was boggling my mind in my linguistics class that I have just prior to Classical Lit. The day we brought up "eternal return", I had just come from a discussion about linear and cyclic scales of time. This applied to linguistics b/c we were discussing obligatory tenses and how when we speak in our culture, we put everything onto a scale of time: past, present, future tense. But I learned that day that not all cultures view time in this manner, some indigenous cultures see time as cyclic. They believe that the important things in life are recurring, so nothing is in the past or future, it is constantly coming around again. I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around this scale of time; how does a culture function on this time scale? What about history? Then MS mentioned "eternal return", and my google search gave a lot of insight into this concept, which is essentially the central belief of our English 213 class: Everything that has happened before and will happen again, since the universe (or time itself) is fundamentally cyclic
Imagine that: did it ever even cross your mind that time could be anything but linear? I know I never questioned the system. I like the idea of cyclic time. Nietzche used it as a basis for practical hope. I think there is a lot of hope in the idea of constant recurring, but how deep are we taking this? To say that nothing is ever new and nothing is irreversible is to deny reality, because while the ideas keep recurring throughout history, they occur under different circumstances and yield a situation that is entirely unique. I completely believe in these archetypes and universal themes- they're the stuff that epiphanies spring from! But they are all colored differently according to the terms under which they occur. I guess that's how history is made. So in a broad sense, I subscribe to this "thought of eternal return"- and absolutely to it's application to this class- but these situations are recurring if you examine them broadly and without the details. The details are what make time linear, and real. And since time is such a fundamental component to our entire existense, it's good to know we have options!
So we know that the word myth comes from the greek "muthos" meaning a "traditional tale". This is indicative of a story, something made up, but in greek society these myths of the gods that we are studying in class were taken for truth.
"The past is but a prefiguration of the future. No event is irreversible and no transformation is final. In a certain sense, it is even possible to say that nothing new happens in the world, for everything is but the repetition of the same primordial archetypes; this repetition, by actualizing the mythical moment when the archetypal gesture was revealed, constantly maintains the world in the same auroral instant of the beginnings."
Now those blockquotes are holding in some mind-boggling ideas about life and the universe- the same idea that was boggling my mind in my linguistics class that I have just prior to Classical Lit. The day we brought up "eternal return", I had just come from a discussion about linear and cyclic scales of time. This applied to linguistics b/c we were discussing obligatory tenses and how when we speak in our culture, we put everything onto a scale of time: past, present, future tense. But I learned that day that not all cultures view time in this manner, some indigenous cultures see time as cyclic. They believe that the important things in life are recurring, so nothing is in the past or future, it is constantly coming around again. I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around this scale of time; how does a culture function on this time scale? What about history? Then MS mentioned "eternal return", and my google search gave a lot of insight into this concept, which is essentially the central belief of our English 213 class: Everything that has happened before and will happen again, since the universe (or time itself) is fundamentally cyclic
Imagine that: did it ever even cross your mind that time could be anything but linear? I know I never questioned the system. I like the idea of cyclic time. Nietzche used it as a basis for practical hope. I think there is a lot of hope in the idea of constant recurring, but how deep are we taking this? To say that nothing is ever new and nothing is irreversible is to deny reality, because while the ideas keep recurring throughout history, they occur under different circumstances and yield a situation that is entirely unique. I completely believe in these archetypes and universal themes- they're the stuff that epiphanies spring from! But they are all colored differently according to the terms under which they occur. I guess that's how history is made. So in a broad sense, I subscribe to this "thought of eternal return"- and absolutely to it's application to this class- but these situations are recurring if you examine them broadly and without the details. The details are what make time linear, and real. And since time is such a fundamental component to our entire existense, it's good to know we have options!
So we know that the word myth comes from the greek "muthos" meaning a "traditional tale". This is indicative of a story, something made up, but in greek society these myths of the gods that we are studying in class were taken for truth.
posted by Carly Parelius at 6:26 PM
1 Comments:
Man, I never tacked you for someone who would get caught up in this, Carly. If you're wondering how I stumbled upon this, I googled your name. A character I am using in a story for some reason reminded me of you and I was really curious where you'd disappeared to and now I find this!
We didn't really talk last year but I got really into the science of the universe and time and all that useless thought and I came upon similar logic. Up until reading your post I'd never even compared it to the ancient beleif of reincarnation, the 'circle' of life (not in the Disney sense), or the idea of time being a repitition.
There's a beleif by a lot of atheists that the universe is an infinitely expaning-and-contracting mass of space and planets and everything you can ever imagine. The idea of an expanding universe is well beleived, I think it was originally published by Hubble or some other big name astrologist. Atheists take it one step further and claim that the only reason we exist is because this was the one time that the universe got it right, created life, had everything perfect for us to exist. It's reasonable to think of--if you rolled a thousand dice for infinity you would eventually get all sixes. The chances of it are terrible but it is possible, right?
All I could think of while reading this was that concept. In itself it's a circular logic--these people thousands of years ago, completely without science or telescopes or machines as we know them today claimed the universe is on loop. And now, with science, we're saying the same thing. Like for all our inventions all we've done is figured out that we were right in the first place.
Time is perhaps the most amazing and terrifying things in life. The idea of a progression through space is easily grasped--walking a few feet to the left is something I can do in my head. But progressing through this invisible, irreversable (maybe?), completely untouchable state of time... The thought literally makes my head hurt and I'm unable to comprehend it. A lot of times I feel like I'm an idiot for even wondering, for wasting so much time marvelling at something so obtuse and useless to my every-day life but there's nothing I can do to help it. It's almost an addiction to fucking up my life, or atleast my comprehension of it. I read a book called 'The Elegant Universe' by Brian Greene, in which he outlines the nature of Einstein's universe--relativity, general and special. I can't remember how many time I had to put the book down, lay my head in my hands and whisper 'holy shit' as I tried to comprehend everything he said in the book.
I don't know, I'm babbling on about stuff you might not even care about. It's good to see you still exist, and you seem happy, and to enjoy your classes. I'd love to talk to you, to hear your ideas.
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