Cyclical v. Linear Time

The other day I was reading about India and my English teacher recommended a talk by Devdutt Pattanaik about the myths of India compared to traditional western myths and how those myths affect how we think today. The natural world shows each human the same thing, but the myths each person holds allows them to make sense of the world that they see. So, the concept of time in India and in the United States is what I will examine in this blog.

The American concept of time is traditionally linear. That everything has a set order, a time line, and once something happens it does not happen again. Similar things may occur but each has its own notch on the linear time record and is separate from one another. Augustine was the first to praise a linear time line because he said time was going somewhere and nothing was ever repeated. On the other hand, Indian time is traditionally cyclical. Cyclical time is first recorded in the Upanishads, when the Rishis believe that time is circular because of the seasons and nature and they saw a center around which everything revolved around (more detail here). Nothing lasts forever, and everything is repeated. Devutt Pattanaik says in his talk, “Not only do [the people of Indian myth] live infinite lives, but the same life is lived infinite times till you get to the point of it all.”

How do these two competing ideas affect the way people think and live? If your view of the world is cyclical, I think you would care more about what happened in the past, so that you could know what would happen in the future. Also, I think your sense of justice and fairness would be more firmly set without any other influences (religious commandments ect.) because ‘what goes around comes around’. On the other hand, linear time is more focused on goals and steps, and the westernized world of business is set up very linearly. So perhaps to succeed in western business you have to give a little to the linear perspective. In Indian myths there is a lot more left unknown, as Pattanaik mentions. He says, “You're not really sure how you stand in front of God. So, when you go to the temple, all you seek is an audience with God.” It leaves justice as a more fluid space (at least in the moral sense of the word, not in actual policing), and I think more questioning would go into morality if someone thought it would affect them in the future. Perhaps thinking more about our actions would be a good thing.