Time & History Brainstorms
We’re all constantly in a process of change, whether we realize it or not. The main factor causing this is time, making us older, to use us as a step to pass to the following generations. Everyone talks about consuming time, but no one notices, that in fact time consumes us. We are abused by it, and then thrown away like garbage. Imperialistic movements in history reminds us of the same thing time does. Then we shouldn’t be surprised of the Western cliche’ saying ‘time is money’, since the whole world is money now.
Changes caused by time: As I type these sentences, it began snowing for the first time this winter in Ankara. The fourth year of the millennium is around the corner, leaving ahead another 996. These are the smaller ones.
Middle-sized changes tell us that the cartoons we used to watch are not popular any more, and you don’t feel like you’ve taken the ÖSS exam, or like you will get used to being a university graduate. Finally some major ones; Saddam Hussein was captured, and then Haydar Aliyev passed away in the same week, suggesting the end of a decades-lasting period.
Still, no matter the scale of a time period, or its significance, it is bound to end, and be left like a light on the other side of the road. We read in history books kingdoms that lasted for a hundred years, taking up one and a half pages. And we still think what we are doing is crucially important. Focus out to see yourself in the world-wide historical context, and someone will tell you that ‘you’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.’
I am aware that the terminology to define historical eras is necessary, like the medieval ages, or the age of enlightenment. However, clear-cut sectioning amuses me, at least when
I consider it from those people’s point of view. Naturally, the people in history were not aware that they were progressing from one era to another. They did not prepare large celebration signs saying ‘welcome Renaissance!’, like we will do next Wednesday. Don’t think little of them, I would say, ‘cause do we know in what era we are anyway, other than making up ‘welcome 2004’ signs, and taking guesses?
‘There were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history was merely a record of his own life,’ a movie script says. And I think there are times when it appears to all of us that our lives will not be in the records of history.

Efe Peker (POLS/IV)