Pattern #24
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Deep Time Perspective
Credit: Bruce Rolff – Shutterstock
Pattern Heart
Wise people and societies do not trade long-term benefits for immediate gratification nor the lessons of the past for the impulses of today. We are all part of an immensely ancient and still unfolding learning adventure, alive in this moment. So help all people and groups play their evolutionary roles consciously and responsibly for future generations and the Earth.
Some related patterns: 5 Bringing Understanding to Life 13 Commons and Commoning 57 Nature First 62 Possibility Thinking 67 Prudent Progress 72 Regenerativity 86 Universal Intelligence
Deep Time Perspective – going deeper …
This is an edited version of the video on this page.
“Deep time” refers to sensing deeply into the past, present and future.
The deep past refers to our 14 billion year evolutionary history as science describes it. It also refers to being aware, respectful, and appreciative of our ancestors and learning from them. It also refers to our history, considered deeply – not just “this country went to war with that country”, but history as lived by ordinary people, history that clarifies their quality of life, their experiences and relationships, and history as lessons for what we can do to avoid damage and enhance quality of life now and in the future. History is filled with lessons like that. Deep time understanding offers us deep and meaningful connections to our past.
Deep time awareness includes not being ahistorical, not thinking that everything important is what is happening now or that everything started when we were born. It is about sensing into what happened earlier, not just as history books with little connection to now, but as a lived reality. We are in the midst of a lived reality shaped by the lived reality that came before us.
The deep present is being fully present in the “here-and-now”, seeing clearly what’s going on now. It includes the future that exists in this now-ness – the possibilities, the tendencies and trends, the things we envision and long for. And this deep present can extend backwards and forwards in time, since all of time is embedded in the Now, as long as it is clearly sensed and seen in the Now.
The deep future we live in can extend over many generations or even to recognizing that our planet will one day be absorbed by the sun and turned to a crisp and disappear. Being fully present in deep time means taking our place in that unfolding time track.
Deep time is both an idea which puts our lives in perspective and a source of tremendous meaning, learning and guidance. It’s not just a mental model. Today is an essential part of deep time, but by itself – in just its most immediate forms – it is too narrow. Likewise, our self-interest is an important part of the larger needs of the world and of our community. But to narrow everything down to our self-interest is destructive, and to narrow everything down to what’s going on today and what I want today is likewise destructive.
We need to put our immediate needs and realities in their place, in the context of larger vistas of time, space and systems. Our stewardship is for the whole of deep time and for all of life, not just for us now.
Most people understand that current impulsiveness can endanger us, driving us to do things that will damage ourselves or others. Failure to think of the future, failure to ground ourselves in what we’ve been taught in the past that is potential guidance, virtually guarantees folly. Learning from the experiences of life is important. Immediate gratification and impulsiveness are not characteristics of wisdom. Our task is to apply these understandings to our own lives, to our communal lives and social structures, and to ask ourselves how we might create systems that embody this kind of stewardship of life for long-term benefit.
Because we seek long-term benefits as part of our working definition of wisdom in this pattern language. I find it particularly useful, in this regard, to hold evolution as a 14 billion year learning adventure. Even before there were humans, learning was being done by other organisms, by natural systems, even by physical laws. There are scientists today that are talking about the evolution of physical laws. At the beginning, in the first few seconds of the Big Bang, nothing remotely like today’s physical laws existed. We have a lot of physical laws that have been emerging over billions of years. The structure of the universe has been shifting and things that were not possible or likely have become more solid and real. There are ways of interacting and being in the universe which are always coming about and generating their own influence on everything else.
Video Introduction (16 min)
Examples and Resources
- Joanna Macy
Link-The Work That Reconnects - Seventh Generation Link-Wikipedia
- Dowd/Barlow Great Story Beads Link
- Scenario work Link-Wikipedia
- Future Search Link
- Evolutionary activism Book
- Sustainability and regenerative cultures Article
- Shamanism Link-Wikipedia
- Shamanic sense of time Link
- Big History Link-Wikipedia
- Big History Project Link to Course
- History as lessons for today (e.g., Facing History and Ourselves Link)
- Our Children’s Trust – Link
- Drawdown Climate Solutions Link
- Participatory Sustainability Book
- Permaculture Pattern Language pp. 5-7, 81-84, 90-100 Book
- Future Design Link
- Theory U Link
- Presencing Institute Link
- Center for the Study of Existential Risk Link
- Use of Big Data to Understand Historic Dynamics Link
- Women’s Congress for Future Generations Link
- The precautionary principle
Link-Wikipedia - Backcasting Link
- Imagineering Link
- Scenario and Visioning Work Link
- Why we need to reinvent democracy for the long-term Link
- Veneration of the dead Link-Wikipedia
- How to Live in the Present Moment Link
- The Echo of the Memory of the Future Thomas Hübl Link
- The biology of our best and worst selves – Link
- What if we could track past lives? Link
Buddhist scholar and systems thinker Joanna Macy has a number of practices to help people become aware of their place in deep time – both lineage and context – and also of becoming responsible stewards and agents within that deep time.
The Native American idea that we should always guide our decisions by what we believe will benefit the seventh generation after us, which is an extension of acting for our children. I have understood the seventh generation concept as a deep time concept. One living individual has the memory of his or her great-grandparents and s/he is seeing in front of them their great-grandchildren. That is three generations before and three generations after – plus the person knowing those generations – so one person’s living experience can embrace seven generations. There are probably exceptions when somebody lives a very long life. Usually somebody has been around and had children and they have their own children. So seventh generation consciousness itself is a deep time past-present-future concept.
Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow talk about and promote what they call The Great Story of Evolution. This is called Big History in more academic circles. It covers the meaningful, science-based story of life from the Big Bang until now, continuing on into the future. They have this story symbolized in a set of beads, sort of like prayer beads or rosaries. Each bead represents some major event in the history of the universe, the history of the planet and of humanity. They even say you have options to add beads representing your own personal history, both the one of your family and the history of yourself personally. So you can carry and embody something that represents deep time consciousness.
ontemplating the immensities of deep time, you face, in a way that is both exquisite and horrifying, the total collapse of your present, compacted to nothingness by the pressures of pasts and futures too extensive to envisage….
Yet there is something curiously exhilarating about the contemplation of deep time. True, you learn yourself to be a blip in the larger projects of the universe. But you are also rewarded with the realisation that you do exist — as unlikely as it may seem, you do exist.”
— Robert Macfarlane – Mountains of the Mind
“Philosopher Roman Krznaric talks of how we generally treat the future as something he calls tempora nullius, ‘empty time’, in reference to the ways that colonising powers throughout history have portrayed the spaces they wish to dominate as terra nullius, ‘empty places’. Our short-termism means we are effectively colonising the future, prioritising our own short-term gains over the future collective good.” – Beatrice Pembroke & Ella Saltmarshe, The Long Time Project – https://medium.com/@thelongtimeinquiry/the-long-time-3383b43d42ab
Another great resource for an already gigantic list of resources (it includes six forms of long-term thinking and six forms of short-term thinking, among many other things): https://medium.com/the-long-now-foundation/six-ways-to-think-long-term-da373b3377a4 –
Thank you all for creating such beautiful spaces to explore wise democracy in deep time. For me of all the patterns in the universe that we can perceive it is the patterns in living relationships, often expressed best though narratives of all kinds, that inspire my curiosity and love. I am an actual neurologist who asks through my performance character, Sylvanus, the Tree Doctor, what humans can learn about health from forests. I explore the convergent interconnecting patterns in the noosphere that are part of an emerging cosmodernity. These ideas and networks of relationships include transdisciplinarity, intergenerational intergenerativity, big history, ecosocial construction, deep bioethics, and “brain” health. Profound gratitude for the opportunities for spirited colearning! And I am working myself on humility – so key to wisdom as Tom said above, although I celebrate boldness as well 🙂 . Peter Whitehouse
Thanks, Peter. Sorry to be so late in responding! I am intrigued by your exploration of “cosmodernity” – a word I’ve never heard before. After a web search that was making me more confused, I finally landed on this definition “A paradigm that states all entities (existence) in the universe [are] defined by [their] relation to all other entities. Concerning education, cosmodernity involves knowledge through a complex, creative, transdisciplinary, polysemous, transcultural, transnational, and transpolitical approach.” (and for readers of our comments, “polysemous” refers to words having multiple meanings – I had to look that up, too!). Which fits with your interest in “the patterns of living relationships”. This causes me to ask if you have read “Braiding Sweetgrass” – a direct transmission of indigenous views of the world as kin engaged in reciprocity. It also makes me think of Nora Bateson’s word symmathesy – mutual learning in context – and her associated practice of “warm data labs”. Humility can coexist with boldness – in the exercise of the “Dancing Among Clarity, Inquiry, Wisdom….” pattern – but not with hubris and arrogance. I think it is a matter of being responsive while being bold, always ready to see more and to shift when warranted. Or else being boldly curious!! 🙂
Regarding Tom’s comment, “The early signals would have been picked up and addressed long ago, and the unfolding events tracked continually for learning and adjustment.” I think that, in addition to shortsightedness, arrogance and ego also play parts in our society’s inability and/or unwillingness to see and address these early signals. Humility and humbleness can go far in helping us to see, acknowledge and understand our role in the pending world crises.
Spot on, Laurie! Humility is an essential aspect of wisdom, if only because wisdom needs to see clearly and be willing to change in light of changes in and around it. Arrogance thinks it Knows, in some solid sense, blocking adaptability and empathy. And when we combine arrogance with technological and economic power, we are in real trouble, due to impacts growing beyond our comprehension and control. Yes, humility is essential for wisdom [and even survival!]!
Thank you Elise and Tom for these powerful perspectives. Can you share specific examples of “putting physical reminders in an individual’s environment?” Would it be like having a figurine of a polar bear on our desk to remind us that the ice sheets are melting? or….? I do believe that visually “concretizing” abstract concepts can help us make meaning, see current application, and understand complex concepts more easily and more clearly. This is exactly what the pattern language cards do.
Your comment, “pandering to overt sensationalism or succumbing to our desire to pick the historical narratives that best support our story.” is so prevalent today that it seems like the status quo, particularly in the media. We are definitely in an age of seeking immediate gratification, quick solutions, lightening-fast decision-making, and super-turbo’ed speeds of living—all intensified by the internet and technology. Coupled with the massively exponentially increasing amount of incoming information we are expected to process, deal with, sort, absorb, learn, think about critically (or not), store for future access, etc., these modern phenomena are increasing anxiety, depression, insomnia, and other illnesses in our society.
Re “physical reminders”, I don’t know. I did about 15 minutes online exploring Dan Ariely’s work, but couldn’t nail that down. It sounds like even a poster of some kind would work, according to him. He also recommends being in a small committed group that is working on the same thing, including their own habit patterns. But I’m not sure what Elise had in mind. She may or may not see this interchange. You could email her (from the class list of addresses).
Re info overload, this is especially toxic when it comes to exercising citizenship. We’re supposed to be informed citizens and voters. But there are SO many issues that are SO complex and have SO many different views which are pushed at us SO hard. To me, it makes total sense to have citizen deliberative councils a la the Microcosms and Populations pattern do the focused deliberation work on issues and inform the rest of us – or even make public decisions themselves. Each issue should have several dozen randomly selected citizens review the issue carefully for days or weeks and share what they’ve found. Powerful facilitation techniques can help them think well together and come to conclusions that make way more sense that what passes for deliberation in our corrupt legislatures and administrations. And/or we could participate in multi-sector, multi-stakeholder, multi-scale network collaborations (see the Inclusive Stakeholder Governance pattern) working in particular issue domains that we care about. We don’t have to know about everything. We just have to make our best contribution on what matters to us and be able to trust others to be doing the same with integrity.
Dan Ariely, the behavioral economist, talks about how you couldn’t engineer a crisis more perfectly designed for people to ignore than climate change. The effects are slow, hard to relate back to any one individual’s actions, and most severely felt by those living in a distant future. Most of us realize the crisis is real, urgent, and demands action – and we’ve all got dinner coming up and a few more email messages to send.
In his work, he found that putting physical reminders in an individual’s environment had the most success when trying to get people to take action that would benefit them and their community in the future. They needed something right in front of them that helped make tomorrow’s need part of today’s reality. I wonder how we might apply this insight to the democratic process more often and more tangibly, without pandering to overt sensationalism or succumbing to our desire to pick the historical narratives that best support our story.
On a personal level, one of my favorite quotes is “Discipline is simply remembering what you really want,” because if you believe you have a bigger, better mission before you, this helps you remember to keep it in mind when making choices. From an organizational perspective, our challenge then is to make it super easy for everyone involved to remember what we collectively really want for our futures. I think this must involve some way to bring the past and future tangibly into the present moment of decision.
This is SO true and SO big, Elise, and relates to SO many patterns, I almost don’t know how to respond. In my heart and vision I know that if we had dozens of people who really GOT what’s going on with this package of interrelated patterns, they/we could offer breakthroughs in understanding how to address climate disruption. Of course, if we’d had a wise democracy 30-60 years ago, we wouldn’t be facing civilizational collapse and human extinction now. The early signals would have been picked up and addressed long ago, and the unfolding events tracked continually for learning and adjustment. Imagine if your wonderings above were actually being pursued by groups who seriously applied the underlying insights in your post and in this pattern language about generating collective wisdom….
As I am living in Sweden we are all reminded by a 16-year school girl every Friday to think of her future. When we have our Friday lunch near the tiny Town Hall we can see people reminding us and others what we need to learn about the Keeling Curve and the Albedo effect. Personally I use as a reminder the Otto Scharmer mediation session to have my future self to ask me what I have learned today how to care about the entire system we are part of.
Yes! I hear you, Folke, on the relationship between deep time + whole system sensing and seeing. Somehow in relationship with one another, the dimensionality becomes expansive and they start to become something of the same multi-dimensional nature. I want to talk with you more about your experience with that particular meditation; I also had a profound experience with the same one…