Ben Ehrenreich

I picked up this book because it was recommended to me twice, and because it is (partially) about time.

I think my main issue with this book is that it is poorly suited for this format. It reads like a realtime serial, and I think it could excel in this format (such as via a SubStack or blog). The author is constantly referencing current events (which are no longer current nor relevant), as well as notes from hikes, looking out his window, and the latest Wikipedia article that has taken his fancy. There's nothing wrong as this as the content to form a body of work—it is just not good as a book.

What is this book about? The primary inquiry seems to be related to time.

Generally, I dislike when people attempt to place this moment in the arc of history. Inevitably, these arcs elevate or denigrate other peoples and cultures in a sporadic fashion, due to the impossibility of history ever being any more than a splotchy approximation of the past, full of huge gaps and placing the emphasis in unmerited places. This book does some of this. It is something I dislike because it is an ontology that creates external cultural authorities (in this case, authorities that are of other times), which undermines the agency of our own time and own culture (which, of course, has influences from other times, but is also distinct). I also dislike this practice because it reinforces dominant paradigms around time. What if we had an "efficient history" theory, similar to the efficient markets theory—which would say that, all history is already fully integrated into the present, and therefore, any comments about history will necessarily be less accurate than the ways in which it has already implicitly shaped present circumstances?

I am fascinated by non-dominant conceptions of time. Unfortunately, the author only seems to highlight more-or-less three modalities: 1) linear, 2) cyclical, 3) apocalyptic. I'm deeply familiar with all three of these modalities already, and am interested in more intuitive theories of time. For example, even though it wasn't explicit, in reading Andreas Weber's "The Biology of Wonder," I got the sense that time is an artifact of life. In other words, non-living objects (by Weber's definition), such as Weber, can perceive and bring attention to across the entirety of their existence across time. In other words, for a rock, time doesn't plod along from moment to moment, but is rather, holographic. This, in turn, destroys the life-centric view of time. Since rocks don't need to worry about reproduction and mortality, they have no need for the mental construct of a "moment in time." Anyways, why isn't Ehrenreich writing more about this, or interestingly intriguing and enlightening subjects?

To come back to the text again—the current events of the beforetimes (before COVID) seem so innocent. I found it challenging to sympathize with our authors concerns—not because they're unmerited, but because they've been overshadowed by my own "current events." If Ehrenreich thought the Trump presidency was apocalyptic, I'm not sure what superlatives are left to describe our current era.… (mehr)