In this session we will explore how our sense of time changes our perception of now and how deep past can help us imagine deep future. Marcia Bjornerud’s book introduces us to the geological understandings of the past and offers a perspective on time which releases us from the ‘tyranny of the contemporary’, allowing us to re-imagine our place in the history of the Earth.

readings

Marcia Bjornerud. Timefulness. How Thinking Like a Geologist can Help Save the World.

Chapter 1 – A Call for Timefulness (6-18)

Chapter 4 – Changes in the Air (118-125)

Chapter 5 – Great Accelerations (126-134, 143-148, 157-158)

Chapter 6 – Future Tense (178-179)

Appendix III.

questions for discussion

How do you imagine ‘time’?

What might be the alternatives to linear understanding of time?

Have you ever felt like you destroyed ‘eternity’ of history in a single moment?

What are the threats of ignoring the planetary history, the natural laws, the timescales of geologic processes?

Why does Marcia Bjornerud believe that “fathoming deep time is arguably geology’s single greatest contribution to humanity?”

What similarities do the past mass extinctions share? Do you see parallels to our current situation?

Should we have international governance mechanisms to oversee and regulate planetary-scale manipulation of the atmosphere? Why or why not?

Where can chronophobia be seen in present society?

What is your take on the expression that our sense of time becomes more refined with age?

How can we as human beings living in the 21st century truly adopt an attitude of timefulness? How can embracing timefulness change our relationship with nature?

In the last paragraph, the author states that Earth is continuously communicating with us with every stone, leaf, and ecosystem. This belief is very widespread in Japan as in Shintoism. I wonder if this belief clashes with the beliefs here in Europe (it feels very anti-Christian)?

What is keeping us from being timeful? If timefulness is such an importatnt thing, why isn’t it widespread already?

How do you understand the words of Aldo Leopold that we need to start “thinking like a mountain?”

additional resources

Marcia Bjornerud. Finding Humility in Our Geologic Past. For the Wild Podcast (audio/text)

Timefulness: A Geologist’s Story. Interview with Marcia Bjornerud by Anja Katina Claus. Center for Humans and Nature (text)

Marcia Bjornerud. Citizens Reunited. Center for Humans and Nature (essay)

Timefullness by Marcia Bjornerud. The Long Now Foundation lecture (video)

Thomas Halliday. Otherlands: A World in the Making (book)