If Time Were Not a Moving Thing . . . – Jimmie Rodgers
Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’, into the future – Steve Miller
KEN HURLEY
My life on a zip line was slower than expected. My ears were pressed to a telephone line when I crossed the line. Where does the line begin? Straight. Linear. Circular. Zig-zaggy. Squiggly. Stick a pin in it. Our timeline usually begins at our birth. However, you can stick a pin in it wherever it suits your narrative.
Would you believe a timeline was once a circle? The transition from a circular to a linear timeline happened gradually. We shifted from the natural repetitive cycles like seasons and crops, toward a belief in progress that required us to move forward as we cataloged unique historical events. It’s unclear to me when this shift is accurately documented. Nobody thought to stick a pin in it. However, those who pay attention believe the linear timeline surpassed the circular timeline sometime during the 18th or 19th centuries. People cite the transition to the growing power of Judeo-Christian theology, which sought to move away from the Greek notion of eternal recurrence – like springtime. This perspective enabled a religious one-way path from creation to Judgment Day. Now, combine the lust for power the church craved with the age of Enlightenment, science, and industrialization, and you get a straight-line focus on progress and a claim for a better future. The need for precise schedules and the rise of capitalist development gave us the phrase “time is money” (usually attributed to Benjamin Franklin) reinforcing the concept that time moves forward in a straight, left to right, irreversible line.
The line is important. The line keeps us in line. We don’t know where the line actually is, we just know that there is a line. Sometimes a deadline. Sometimes we were told not to color outside of the line. Sometimes there is a line in the sand. Sometimes there is a red line. And if you cross the line, you’re in big trouble.
How many times have you been asked, “What’s your timeline?” At a party? From a potential relationship? On a date? If so, let me know, because no one has ever asked me, “What’s your timeline?”
Ever notice when warmongers seek another war, they justify their lust for destruction by pointing to a place on a timeline that suits their needs? Look at Putin, Bush, DJT, and Netanyahu. So many more too. If you can control the start of the timeline, you can control the definition of the aggressor and the oppressed. The most critical aspect of any timeline is not what it includes, but where it begins. In any political, legal, or social argument the choice of a starting point acts as a frame that dictates the moral or logical outcome.
Timelines are excellent tools when you want to mislead an argument by manipulating context, compressing time, and selecting specific events to create false patterns of causality. Timelines can present complex history as linear narratives, ignoring contradictory data to “prove” a predetermined conclusion by cherry-picking events, creating false cause-and-effect relationships, and omitting context.
The word “timeline” is more than a synonym for a schedule or a historical record. It is a conceptual framework through which humanity tries to organize the chaotic flow of existence into a linear, comprehensible narrative. At its simplest, a timeline is a graphical representation of a period of time, on which important events are marked. A timeline is a deliberate selection of “starts” and “ends” that define how we perceive progress.
People pick specific places on a timeline to establish a cause. If a politician wants to blame an economic crisis on an opponent, they might start their timeline at the moment the opponent took office. Conversely, the opponent will extend the timeline back further to show that the crisis happened long before. The narrative of responsibility changes by shifting the start of the timeline.
Consider the debate regarding the 1619 Project versus the 1776 Commission. The 1619 timeline argues that the American story truly began with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans, placing the legacy of slavery at the center of our national identity. The 1776 timeline argues that the nation began with the Declaration of Independence, centering the story on the ideals of liberty. Neither date is incorrect in a factual sense. However, the choice of which date to treat as the “beginning” of the American timeline fundamentally alters the argument about what the country is and what, if anything, it owes its citizens.
In the digital age, the timeline has migrated from the history book to the social media feed. On platforms like X or Facebook, your “Timeline” is a literal stream of what you post.
Timelines can be used to justify retaliation. When violence erupts, the timeline used by one media outlet might start with a specific rocket attack. Another media outlet might start their timeline fifty years earlier. By choosing a specific point on the timeline, both outlets can present a factual sequence of events that lead to diametrically opposed conclusions. Take a peek at the Israeli and Palestine debacle and what’s happening in Ukraine.
While history and politics want a linear timeline to provide clarity, literature often breaks the timeline to provide depth. Writers understand that human experience is rarely linear. We tend to live in the past through our memories and the future through our angst.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, the protagonist Billy Pilgrim becomes “unstuck in time.” The timeline is shattered, mirroring the trauma of war. By jumping between the 1940s and the distant future, Vonnegut argues that a linear timeline is an inadequate tool for processing the horror of the Dresden bombings.
Homer begins The Iliad halfway through the chronological timeline, which forces the reader to reconstruct the past through dialogue and flashback. Rather than a path to follow, the timeline becomes a puzzle for the reader to solve.
In the film Memento there are two distinct, simultaneous timelines. A color timeline which shows scenes moving backward in time and shows the present. And, a black-and-white timeline which shows scenes moving forward which show the past. In the end the two timelines converge. Confused? Watch the movie!
Humans are supposedly the only animals with the ability to mentally travel through time. We can construct our life timelines to make sense of our personal growth. We can imagine a time machine that can take us to the future or the past.
A timeline suggests a rigid, scientific truth, but the reality is, a timeline is one of the most subjective tools humans ever created. We use timelines to validate our current positions or forgive our past actions. Whether we are looking at the geological timeline of our planet, the political timeline of our country, or the fictional timeline of a novel, we must always remember and never forget to ask: Which nudnick drew this line, and why did they start it there? To understand a timeline is not just to know the dates, but to understand the motive behind the pins. Time may be an infinite flow, but a timeline is a human cage designed to hold only the truths we are willing to show.
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