{"id":85436,"date":"2017-01-16T12:00:46","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T12:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=85436"},"modified":"2017-01-14T14:41:09","modified_gmt":"2017-01-14T14:41:09","slug":"the-coming-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/01\/the-coming-new-year\/","title":{"rendered":"The Coming “New Year”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The custom of marking the beginning of a so-called new year is also simultaneously a recognition of mortality and death \u2013 of history, the past, of things destined to be forgotten or, if remembered, known as a substrate for what looms ahead.<\/p>\n

Few of us think, as the countdown towards the new beginning itself begins, that we celebrate an arbitrary mark, a kind of line in the sand, that the very notion of a ‘year’ \u2013 or time itself \u2013 is a human construction.\u00a0 The inconceivably vast universe in which our frail blue planet is embedded transcends our time and our times.\u00a0 Stretching infinitely away and expanding at distances which our most ingeniously constructed vehicles will never traverse, I am tempted to say that it, our universe, is ‘indifferent’.<\/p>\n

But that’s not true, because this notion too, of ‘indifference’, has been constructed by the human mind with the human being as fulcrum: if our concerns count for nothing, then of course we are being coldly ignored.\u00a0 Ignorance, however, is not the universe’s fault, but ours.\u00a0 As filmmaker Stanley Kubrick said in an interview<\/a> with Playboy in 1968, “However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”<\/p>\n

Well, we have supplied lots of light \u2013 and heat \u2013 since our inception.\u00a0 The fires of war have raged for as long as we have existed, and even now that our intelligence has penetrated to the core of the atom and the quantum leap that started the greater world, they continue to rage and burn. Our globe is melting, like it or not, and our numbers are increasing beyond the level at which a reasonably pleasant life \u2013 in areas not at war \u2013 may be sustained.\u00a0 By the year \u2013 again that convention! \u2013 2050 there will be 10 billion souls plotting, charting, scrounging, amassing, organising, oppressing, fighting, thinking, building, searching still, and loving, or trying to.<\/p>\n

A friend of mine used to append a quotation with every email saying, in effect, that science begins with counting.\u00a0 It irked me because it’s only partly true: knowing the numbers of things is hardly everything. And beyond a certain quantity the human mind is simply bewildered. Who can conceive of trillions, billions, millions, hundred thousands, in any meaningful way?\u00a0 Which brings us to the paradox of size and power.\u00a0 Knowing numbers has given us the power that lies beyond virtually all of our technological advances, and that has also allowed to evolve great political entities, countries filled with many millions.<\/p>\n

But the price we pay for such vast sums, such vast collections, is ignorance and impersonality.<\/p>\n

In 1973 E. F. Schumacher published Small Is Beautiful<\/a>, a book that enjoyed a kind of ‘hippie’ success in the day but which, in our age of growth, globalism and gigantism, seems to have been forgotten<\/a> \u2013 at least by the politicians and money-makers who shape and dictate our economies, economies which say that bigger and faster is always better.<\/p>\n

Which brings us back to ‘time’.\u00a0 There seems to be less and less of this precious commodity, whether for ourselves in our daily lives, scuttling to and fro, hellbent on pestering each other with every ‘experience’ via ‘social’ media, or for our Earth, whose lease, as far as human habitation goes, “hath all too short a date.”<\/p>\n

So for this coming \u2013 future \u2013 on whatever date we wish to commemorate a chunk of it, I say “think small”: let’s ponder the things and people within our ken, those we can touch and feel and see and engage with personally. And let’s slow things down enough to savour them.\u00a0 Perhaps the light we generate this way will overcome.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/p>\n

Dr. Emanuel E. Garcia is an American poet, novelist and physician who now resides in New Zealand. He may be contacted at <\/em>emanuelegarcia@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The custom of marking the beginning of a so-called new year is also simultaneously a recognition of mortality and death \u2013 of history, the past, of things destined to be forgotten or, if remembered, known as a substrate for what looms ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspirational"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}