The Problem With Linear Time

Thinking of time cyclically especially made sense in premodern societies, where innovations were few across generations and people lived similar lives to those of their ancestors going back many generations. Without change, progress was unimaginable and meaning could only be found in embracing the cycle of life and playing your part in it well.

Linear progress is a kind of default way of thinking about history in the modern west and this risks blinding us to the ways in which gains can be lost, advances reversed. It also fosters a sense of the superiority of the present age over supposedly less “advanced” times. Finally, it occludes the extent to which history doesn’t repeat itself but does rhyme.