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Deep Time
Deep Time
“There is no such thing as the time. There are hundreds or even thousands of times and ways of telling them…Yet GMT imperiously (and falsely) declares its hours to be the standard for all.” - Jay Griffiths
Japanese Tenpo Calendar
Tohono O'odham Calendar
Mayan Tzolk'in Calendar
Cultures have kept time in diverse ways for thousands of years, prior to the Gregorian calendar and Western clock. So, how did the majority of the world come to operate under the Gregorian calendar and Western timekeeping? How did the majority of the world come to be displaced from its timekeeping traditions? The answer, unsurprisingly, is imperialism, colonialism, and supremacy. To absorb (and most successfully exploit) new peoples in this expansionism, these peoples must be uprooted from their cultural, temporal, and/or place-based traditions. They cannot be converted to laborers until they are converted to a common clock and calendar. Their lives can no longer revolve around the cultural or ecological, but must be assimilated to the overarching imperial functions. As such, centuries and millennia of culture-keeping have been outmoded in the last several hundred years.
Time that was once local and ecologically-intimate becomes globalized and ecologically-alienated. Divorcing people from land, this ecological alienation paves the way (figuratively and literally) for ecological destruction.
“The ultimate expression of white supremacy is control of time itself.”
- anthropologist Camilla Power
The Gregorian calendar is by no means universal or secular. It is a European Christian time system–with years measured in "Anno Domini" (AD) "in the year of Our Lord (Jesus Christ)" and “Before Christ” (BC). The universal imposition of this time system is inextricably linked with the legacy of Euro-centric Christianization and ethnic cleansing. Whether through the transatlantic abduction and enslavement of Black people, the colonization and genocide of Indigenous peoples, the long history of forced conversion and massacres of Jews, or the ongoing missionization efforts globally–the list goes on. While clocks and calendars may sound trivial, these matters cannot be separated from so many peoples’ battles for cultural survival and sovereignty amidst supremacism.
"Because of them [missionaries] we started to follow the white calendar," says an indigenous Guarani-Kaiowa person in Brazil, reflecting on the “cultural extermination” of his people. (Through deforestation, agriculture, and plantation production, the Guarani-Kaiowa's way of life is being destroyed. For the last hundred years, they have been dispossessed of their land, and facing increasing violence and crisis.)
Author C.K. Raju reflects on the situation in India: “The [Gregorian] calendar is the sole calendar taught in our schools…the dates stamped on our certificates and passports…The exclusion of these other calendars alienates people from their culture…Because of the colonial superstition that everything Western is superior and must be uncritically accepted.”
Journalist Loubna Flah laments that more and more young Moroccans are unfamiliar with the traditional Islamic calendar. She describes a young woman who was asked of the current Hijri year. The young woman struggled for some time to recall the order of the Hijri months, at last saying: "I really don't know."
What Year is it? (Whose Calendar?)
Gregorian: 2023 Assyrian: 6771 Chinese: 4720 Jewish: 5783 Persian: 1401 Buddhist: 2563
Islamic: 1444 Korean: 4356 Hindu (Shaka): 1944 Igbo (Nigerian): 1023 Burmese: 1385
The list goes on.
And some traditions (like the highly complex Mayan time system) can't be easily represented in terms of centuries and millennia.
Unraveling the Vastness
Concepts of time contain entire architectures of existence–the temporal dimensions of ancestors–the fabric through which worlds are woven. In Jewish belief, time is the most sacred realm in which we dwell, as expressed by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel described time traditions as our immaterial, holy sites–magnificent sanctuaries we consecrate amidst celestial cycles. So many peoples have been robbed of so much in this world. As the Earth is increasingly commodified, and our diversity is increasingly suppressed, the vastness of creation is silenced. We must unravel these confines, to liberate this vastness that churns underneath. Time is not one sterilizing system, or one true reality, but many spiraling galaxies of awareness and imagining. Diverse, cyclical, ecological, cosmic, cultural, and infinitely indescribable.
Further Reading and References
How to Breathe 1—Capitalism as Robbery by anthropologist Camilla Power
The tyranny of clocks and calendars by Jay Griffiths, author of Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time
Current year in varying calendars 2023 by Statista
Time for a 'secular' calendar by C.K. Raju, author of The Eleven Pictures of Time: The Physics, Philosophy, and Politics of Time Beliefs
Why Moroccans Celebrate the Gregorian New Year More Than the Islamic New Year by Loubna Flah of Morocco World News
The complex history of standardizing time by Greg Johnson of PennToday
Calendar Time, Cultural Sensibilities, and Strategies of Persuasion by Kevin Birth, author of Time, Temporality and Global Politics
The Sabbath by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
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