Why We Exchanged Circular Sustainability for a World of Straight Lines

Summary

The text discusses the shift from a cyclical understanding of time and spirituality to a linear one, and the impact this has had on our relationship with the environment and ethics.

Abstract

The article explores the transition from ancient circular concepts of time, where actions and consequences are interconnected within a constant present, to the linear progression of time introduced by monotheistic religions and historical record-keeping. This shift has led to a focus on future progress and a teleological worldview, which has both driven human ethical advancements and enabled the justification of harmful actions in the present for future gains. The author argues that this linear perspective is unsustainable and contrasts with the regenerative principles of nature, suggesting that a return to a more cyclical view might foster greater sustainability and interconnectedness.

Opinions

The author suggests that a cyclical understanding of time, prevalent in ancient spiritual systems, fosters a sense of interdependence and responsibility for one's actions due to the belief in reincarnation and the constant present.
The invention of writing and the adoption of historical time have led to a linear religious and ethical framework, which views the world as a work in progress moving towards a messianic age.
The linear view has positively influenced ethics and the pursuit of social justice but has also allowed for the justification of harmful actions now for perceived future benefits.
The author criticizes the modern disregard for the environment and society, seen in the treatment of natural resources and people as disposable, as a consequence of linear progression and the externalization of costs.
The text posits that a circular understanding of time, with its focus on repetition and resonance with divine archetypes, is inherently more sustainable than the linear model that dominates modernity.
The author implies that the linear narrative, with its emphasis on progress and originality, is less compatible with the cyclical nature of the natural world and existence.

We drive forward with our eyes on the horizon, ignoring the devastation we create in our wake

Photo: Dmitrii Sakharov/EyeEm/Getty Images

Modernity is not particularly conducive to awe. We are painfully disconnected from the larger cycles of day, night, moon, and season, making it harder for us to witness or identify with the inspiring renewal all around us. Spirituality has become less of a state of being than yet another goal to attain in the future. Unlike today, the vast majority of humankind’s experience was spent understanding time as circular. Only recently did we adopt a more historical approach to time, and a correspondingly more aggressive way of manifesting our spiritual destiny. That’s the main difference between the spiritual systems that humans lived with over many millennia and the infant religions that fueled colonialism in the last dozen or so centuries.

In a cyclical understanding of time, the consequences of one’s actions can never be externalized or avoided. Everyone reincarnates, so if you do something bad to another person, you’ll have to meet them again. If you spoil the natural world, you will be reborn into it yourself. Time and history are nonexistent, and the individual is living in the constant present. As a result, everything and everyone is interdependent and emanating from the same shared source of life.

The invention of writing gave people the ability to record the past and make promises into the future. Historical time was born, which marked the end of the spirituality of an eternal present, and the beginning of linear religion and monotheism. Before the notion of a past and a future, it was difficult to explain how a single all-powerful god could exist if there was still so much wrong with creation. With the addition of history, the imperfect world could be justified as a work in progress. God was perfect, but his plan for the world was not yet complete. Someday in the future, the messianic age would come, when God’s perfection would be manifest. Those who were faithful or remained on the good side of God’s law would end up okay in the end. The Bible was both the chronicle of a people’s emergence from slavery and a contract with God — a covenant — for their future prosperity if they followed his commandments.

And so the duality of “before and after” became a central premise of religion. Things were now moving in one direction. Instead of the wholeness and possibility of a timeless, interconnected universe, the world of scripture had a timeline and destiny — at least for the faithful. The future was a work in progress for people and their God. Tomorrow would be better than today. Reincarnation became obsolete: Only one messiah needed to die for all to resurrect. When he comes back, the whole thing is over. This was now a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

There were some positive repercussions to this more linear understanding of time. It provoked an entirely new approach to ethics and progress. We humans could make the world a better place, and move toward greater justice. As recounted by biblical legend, once the ancient Israelites escaped from the stasis of slavery they were liberated into a story of their own making. Moses and his brother-in-law immediately wrote the laws by which this new ethical people would live. Religion went from a set of timeless rituals to a directed behavioral code.

On the other hand, our focus on the future enabled our intended ends to justify almost any means. Inhumane disasters like the Crusades as well as the progressive philosophies of Hegel and Marx all depended on a teleological view of our world. At their best, these approaches elevate our commitment to ethics and social justice. But they also tend to divorce us from the present. We become able to do violence now for some supposedly higher cause and future payoff.

We drive forward with our eyes on the horizon, ignoring the devastation we create in our wake. We clear forests permanently, and extract coal, oil, and water that can’t be replenished. We treat the planet and people as resources to be used up and thrown away. We enslave human beings to build luxury technologies, and subject people in faraway places to pollution and poverty. Corporations dismiss these devastating side effects as externalities — the collateral damage of doing business, falling entirely on people and places unacknowledged on their spreadsheets.

A belief in reincarnation or karma would make it hard to engage in such inhumanity without some fear of repercussion. Nothing can be externalized because everything comes back around. With reincarnation expunged from religion, we don’t have to worry about someday meeting the person we harm today. By maintaining our belief in a divine intervention, we are more at liberty to destroy the natural world and await rescue from above. A circular understanding of time is incompatible with such extraordinary, singular moments as an apocalypse. Everything just is, and has always been. There’s no such thing as progress — just seasons and cycles. In fact, a common tenet of many pre-Judaic religions is that human beings can’t take a genuinely original action. Human activity is experienced, instead, as the endless repetition of archetypal gestures. Any action taken by a person, any object created, is significant only insofar as it resonates in a greater, transcendent reality. Actions take on meaning because they reenact the divine. Every time people make love, they are reenacting the union of divine archetypes. Every thing made or constructed is just an echo of the gods’ creativity. To those of us enmeshed in modernity, this may sound positively boring and devoid of purpose. There’s no emphasis on progress. There’s no originality, no authorship, no copyright, and no patents. No direction.

But it’s also entirely more sustainable than a unidirectional flow of natural resources into waste products — externalities that are supposed to be ignored until the end. Such a process runs counter to the regenerative principles of nature and existence.

People used to believe in circles. They came to believe in lines.

This was section 67 of the new book Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff, which is being serialized weekly on Medium. Read the previous section here and the following section here.