I am extremely grateful for the suggestion to read *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance." I got luck and read it over the weekend. If there is interest in it more generally, I
will try to pull together a number of passages I think relevant to recent XMCA discussions.
But with respect to time, the very sad afterward begins with a discussion of..... time.
Quote (p. 407 of my edition)
This book has a lot to say about Ancient Greek perspectives and their meaning but there
is one perspective it misses. That is their view of time. They saw the future as something that
came upon them from behind their backs with the past receding away before our eyes.
When you think about it, that's a more accurate metaphor than our present one. Who
really CAN face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows
that such projections are always wrong.