I thought this would be an appropriate word as another year flies by and we enter the Christmas season … again … and again. Is this the ‘recurrence’ that Nietzsche meant when he said ‘this life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more … ‘
30 November 2012
chronophobia
[kron-oh-foh-bee-uh]
noun
– irrational fear of time and time moving forward
– fear of the duration or immensity of time.
Example sentences:
‘Prisoners often develop chronophobia as the realisation of the duration of their sentence sets in’.
‘For Nietzsche, any recoil at the prospect of recurrence (reliving life) suggests a kind of chronophobia, an aversion to time and becoming. And he claims that existential, psychological aversion is the basis for an intellectual chronophobia at the heart of the Western philosophical tradition – which, however, generally expressed its aversion to time on the more impersonal level of the search for the truth and foundations of knowledge’.
(Extracted from ‘Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence’, by Lawrence J. Hatab)
Today’s aphorism
‘Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter when the
promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath a clear blue
sky?‘
– from the song ‘Goodbye Blue Sky‘, from Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall‘, written by Roger Waters.
On this day
30 November 1835 – birth of Mark Twain, U.S. novellist, author of ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ and ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’. Died 21 April 1910.
30 November 1874 – birth of U.K. Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill. Died 24 January 1965.
30 November 1936 – Crystal Palace in Britain is destroyed by fire. The Crystal Palace had been constructed for the Great Exhibition in 1851 and featured the first public toilets in England. During the Exhibition, visitors were able to pay 1 penny to use the conveniences. It was from this that the term ‘spend a penny’ came into use as a euphemism for visiting the loo.
30 November 1950 – U.S. President Harry S. Truman announces that he is willing to use atomic bombs to bring peace to Korea.
30 November 1979 – Pink Floyd releases their cult album ‘The Wall’, which was later made into a movie and one of the greatest stage-shows of all time. Roger Waters, singer/song-writer for Pink Floyd, performed ‘The Wall’ stage-show with other celebrities on 21 July 1990 in Berlin, to celebrate the tearing down of the Berlin Wall.
30 November 2007 – death of U.S. daredevil, Evel Knievel from breathing difficulties. Knievel was best known for his failed attempt to jump over the Grand Canyon on a rocket-propelled motor-bike. He also successfully, and often unsuccessfully, attempted long distance motor-bike jumps, such as jumping 14 buses. Through his career, Knievel broke 35 bones. Born on 17 October 1938 as Robert Craig Knievel.