Someone wrote:
> This is what a LO is about -- being conscious about all other members
> in the learning organisation, caring for them, enoying the music which
> they make, forgetting about linear time.
I define three types of time, which alleviates a lot of confusion in the
way we talk about time. There is physical or evolutionary time, which is
simply the events and processes that are happening. Then there is clock
time, which is the measure of physical time for various purposes. And
third, there is psychological or inner time, which is the set of all
experiences of time.
Clock time and physical time don't seem to change much, unless you're
travelling near the speed of light. Inner time changes a lot, though in
the West we presume that it ideally will 'match' the presumed flow of
physical time (which physicists say has never really been 'discovered').
Only inner time seems to have a quality we could call linear. This
linearity is a sense or perception that time flows horizontally, for the
most part. Often from past to present to future, but sometimes perceived
the other way. I have surveyed thousands of people about this perception,
and in the Western countries, there is general agreement on this, although
the orientation of this 'arrow' of time varies in its relationship to the
body. (E.g., some people perceive the past at their left, the future at
their right; others say the past is behind, the future ahead; an
aboriginal culture puts the past in front.) At times of holidays, the
linearity breaks down a bit, and changes to some extent to circularity,
thinking about where we were at Christmas last year, e.g. Looking back
through the years.
Steve Randall
Email: stevrandal@aol.com
Web: http://members.aol.com/rslts
--"Stephen Randall" <srandall@Nuance.COM>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>