good & evil

time

many people incorrectly assume time to be a steady incline. a measured arc of growth and progress. but when history is written by the victors, the narrative can often misrepresent its shape. in reality, time as we experience it (through our limited scope), is merely an ebb and flow, more circular than it is direct. the direction knowledge moves is not always forward.

if it is indeed true that collective perception of time in geologic time scales is shaped by knowledge, then it must be true of the individual as well. here is another hypothesis:

intelligent people respond more quickly to stimuli. in other words, intelligent people experience time faster, and may be perceived as having more of it. in some sense, intelligence is also an illness – mania is frequently a side-effect of genius. perhaps those with such an excess of time are simply experiencing it differently?

intimacy

for better or worse, there is a certain intimacy to the pursuit of knowledge that i find unsettling. i don’t necessarily mean intimacy in the sense of seduction (although i don’t not mean it that way). there is closeness in the admission of not knowing. power in the expression of an amorphous, unformed thought.

power

but power is paradoxical. if it is a thing to be had, it must be capable of possession. say you are given some power, which then increases your capacity to accumulate more power. your capacity for power increases exponentially in relation to the actual power you have gained. thus, to gain power is to be increasingly powerless.

possession

if time in excess is mania, and power (or knowledge) in excess is actually the increasing lack thereof, can anything worth possessing, then, be possessed “enough”?