Jim Brumm: Long-Term Thinking for a Short-Sighted World

It has been said that when humans first encountered the world of quantum physics, that mysterious through-the-looking-glass domain where  things refuse to follow the known Newtonian rules, it was the first time that we had come across something that we could see, but that our brains were unable to fully comprehend. I would venture to say that the concept of deep time presents a similar challenge. We seem to have great trouble getting our heads around it.

By deep time we are talking here about time measured in millions or billions of years. In our modern world we throw these numbers around lightly. For many of us they’ve lost their meaning; we have become inured to them. We certainly can’t imagine what a billion years means; as with quantum physics our brains aren’t wired for time at that scale. But to try and get some idea of just how long a billion years really is, consider this:  A billion seconds ago it was 1959. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age. A billion days ago nobody walked the Earth on two feet. So to try to get a mental grip on a billion years, well, the best we can do is say that it’s a very long time.

We use the term “prehistoric” to mean before we were keeping written records or building things that we can see today, like the pyramids in Egypt. Beyond that, it’s like we’re wading into the sea. Our current lives occupy dry land, then we wade ankle-deep into the recent past, then farther, up to our waists and chests into the ancient past. Very quickly we’re standing on the edge of the continental shelf of our awareness of the past and everything slides down into the murky, unexplored depths of deep time, the before time, the long, long ago.

A question that might be asked here, I suppose, is who cares? Why is it important to try to understand time scales of this magnitude?

Perspective.

There are benefits for those who can gain perspective on nature’s time scale and our place in it. Just as an older person, through life experience and a longer view, has greater wisdom and insight on any particular situation than a very young person, so can we all gain wisdom and insight when we are able to step back from our typically short-term perspectives and embrace the whole. Doing so helps us choose more wisely; it helps us reprioritize what matters to us as individuals and to the planet and to the future. Just as small children tend to focus only on what is right in front of them at any particular moment, losing sight of the big picture, we, too, tend to focus only on our brief moment of time, losing perspective of the long-term ramifications of decisions we are trying to make. But if we make the effort, collectively and as individuals, to expand our perspective of time and our place in it, we will see that asking “what if” before making decisions can help us avoid having to look at the mess we’ve created and lamenting, as we so often do, “if only.”

Earlier civilizations lacked the perspective we have today. They were trying things out, and learning what does and doesn’t work. We have the benefit of their mistakes. We have thousands of years of bad examples from which to learn. If we are willing we can look back through our history and see exactly what not to do. For example, don’t cut all the trees down (especially if you’re stuck on an island). Don’t pollute the river so bad that it lights on fire, as we did several times with the Cuyahoga River in Ohio. Don’t spray pesticides to kill insects without thinking about what else you might be killing in the process. Don’t invade Russia in the winter. The lessons, on pretty much every subject, are there for us if we choose to use them.

Scientists are in general agreement that the Earth is around 4.6 billion years old. We have been around for about 2 million years and in our modern form, genetically and behaviorally, for only about 50 thousand years. We stopped wandering around and started living in settled communities only about 12 to 15 thousand years ago. All of recorded history spans only about 5 to 6 thousand years. Taking the long-term view, we, as the song says, have only just begun. We are the new kids on the block.

In our anthropocentric viewpoint, we imagine that the planet is and has always been all about us and that we’ll always be here. In fact, to us it seems as though we always have been here. But as Carl Sagan once said, “No species is guaranteed its tenure on this planet.”  Or as Bill Bryson put it, “Life on Earth, you see, is not only brief but dismayingly tenuous. It is a curious feature of our existence that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life, but even better at extinguishing it.” He goes on to point out that the average species on Earth lasts for only about 4 million years. That would put us currently about half way through our run. A disconcerting fact is that 99.99 percent of the billions of species that have ever lived on this magical, life-friendly planet are now extinct. Let us not, in our arrogance and short-sightedness, suffer the illusion that our place at the table is guaranteed or that Mother Nature cares if we disappear to make room for whatever comes next. It would behoove us all to understand that our existence here is a precious, unlikely gift, one we need to actively nurture if we want it to continue. Our behavior thus far, unfortunately, has been to ignore the big picture and focus only on what is in front of us right now. We have gotten away with this for quite some time. But today’s environmental and social problems demand that we stand back and take a long-term view of our decisions, or we may very well join the 99.99 percent of species that have come and gone before us.

So let us together try to get a better grip on deep time, and on understanding the epic time scale in which nature does her work. Let us explore the vast, temporal wilderness that lies just outside our day-to-day understanding, and in so doing, work together to gain a wider, wiser perspective of our planet, life and our place in time. Then let us cooperate in exploring how we can apply that new perspective to improving our lives and our planet.