LONG TIME NO SEE

Consider terrestrial weather in the time periods of the major planets. There are four, with periods of 10, 30, 85 and 165 years. For such long term understanding, it is useful to consider those from the outside in, as 165, 85, 30 and 10 years of Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter respectively.

Some civilizations have existed thousands of years. To be fair, it is understood that for the most part only Saturn and Jupiter were visible and readily understood. But the two outer planets were anticipated decades before their discoveries.

The United States has existed only one of those longest periods, for the U.S. bicentennial, 200 year anniversary occurred in 1976. Many busy, prosperous cities throughout the Old World are three thousand years old. They know their climates.

It is time for America to stop being the stooge and thug for the Roman Empire, even if Romulus and Remus did move to London. Maybe even modern Europe should call it enough. Rome's heady England has a tendency to conceal plans for itself in its inanimate crown devices, while nobly suggesting tempting, conflict-ridden actions among everybody itself. While loyal to Canada and Australia, England's Romish belief is that the United States has to make a decision whether to be like Spain which did not recognize the founding Kings Romulus and Remus and the borders of which were left to rot so that it was promptly taken over by numerous Moroccans.

That would mean relegating the Declaration of Independence to the status of an English historical document.

Civilizations that have watched Saturn complete its 30 year orbit a hundred times are formidable, just as a father and grandfather are formidable in dealing with potential criminality in a teenage son.

It's not likely that such a son could understand all the events that span more than three times the entire time he has existed. Yet a 17-year old may be, or have, serious problems and his impatience only makes understanding and maturity more difficult for himself and others. 3*17 is only 51; his father may be that and his grandfather certainly will is.

This is familiar in the way children have little ability to foresee the next hour, or tomorrow, and a week hence is very difficult for a small child. It is related to their attention span, which is the length of time one can keep as a single perceptual environment. It takes practice to pay attention to an entire inning in softball among six or eight-year olds. Older children take the game as a whole event. When they go to work, they are expected, and many do
attain proficiency or expertise at directing their attention to the business for hours at a time. Managers and executives can conduct business as a coherent whole for months, seasons, and
years. Presidents are depended upon to execute the office of the president as a single unified event through the four year sidereal cycle.

But the quadrennial four year cycle is not the longest span of time in which events develop in the evolution of nations.

There are fundamental reasons for that, in the trade-off between time and energy that was discovered in quantum mechanics. Yet the fact that quantum mechanics emerged very recently, within the history of the United States, does not mean that the United States understands, automatically or even potentially, the implications of the passage of thirty centuries of time in the development of other cultures. The study of action itself began three thousand years ago; quantum mechanics was the flower, just as computers are the flower of logic.

It is easy to understand this if one observes with a spectroscope the energy spectra which are emitted by lamps such as neon, sodium and phosphorus. The lines one sees are narrow, and the vary from merely narrow or fine, to hyperfine. A person of recent understanding can look at a persistent fine line for a time. Even considering it with competence in his best good faith, he understands at first that the particular line will be exactly the same energy forever and that it
has the energy now that it will have, say, tomorrow, or next week, next season or next year. If he has some maturity he will catch the sense of it four years hence. He may reflect on that energy in his past if he has a good memory for colors.

The Chinese Spring and Autumn Period was a time in which certain works described events with great depth, and resolved the difference between Spring and Autumn in systematic ways that had been true since immemorial time. One of these was described to me as the difference between hypertrophy and eutrophy. They were asking, what is the difference between spring and autumn since long ago? Oh, see, the past is not merely extended into the future. The future is an entirely different dimensionality than the past. Hypertrophy has to do with an abundance of oxygen in surface waters (I think) and eutrophy with a deficiency. The result has to do with the amount of plant growth.

Now, my understanding of Chinese civilization often appears to me as the memory of the blink of a firefly. That is because each time one learns something new about China, it is lost in a huge, vast, enduring, massive civilization that covers vast area. It is not like arguing with my Daddy about why I never win. When I got into trouble, I always knew as it unfolded that my father was so way ahead of me that it seemed he must be like a time traveler, and knew the future. I did not know he could contrast me with durable things like oak trees or mountains.

China's civilization is so old that few people, even Chinese, have more than an ephemeral sense of the difference between its past and future, because Chinese concepts wrap completely around thousands of years at a time. Modern clocks measure time well, but in a world in which energy of the past is not necessarily distinct from energy of the future.

That's why Charles XII of Sweden, then Napoleon of France, and finally Hitler of Germany all were repulsed when they invaded Russia. Russians knew their land and its climate deeply, in
evolutionary time, and those in foreign countries who did not understand Russia in evolutionary time were naturally encouraged to invade at a time most propitious for Russia.

It should not be necessary to describe the similarity between those events, and the current position of the United States in the Eastern Pacific. For instance, when India developed its
atomic bomb, exactly twenty years to the day passed between the first test and the second. And that is a short period of time. The Asia land mass is not to be regarded as a tempting target
where the lives of others are involved, particularly now that the ancient half-billion year old goal of reaching the Moon is attained and the airless, waterless moon has shoe-prints on it.

The primary inciter of that invasion is in Europe, geologically part of the same Asian land mass. That means the United States does not have a voice either among those waging onslaughts against Asia, or those defending it. Could Asia be subtly goading the rest of the world?

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