Cyclical time

[desmond101]

This episode reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut's book Slaughterhouse Five, in which the main character experiences time trips in which he travels into his past and future. Vonnegut presents an obscure theory of cyclical time instead of a linear model. Most humans think in a linear fashion with death being the end of one's life in a linear world(excluding all talk of religion). However in a cyclical world, time is just one big cycle in which death, among other things, is just an event in one's life. There is no escaping it, and past or future experiences are relived. Desmond seems to experience this effect, and since everyone was subject to radiation maybe this could explain the flashbacks as well as flash forwards. Also this could explain Charlie's death in that he is not really dead. Charlie does say, "Yes I did die but I'm here now." So death is really not the end of one's life, just another event.

[boutte]

I came across this post and had to say that I think TPTB are heavilt influenced by this concept of time. They even used one of Vonnegut's main themes when Daniel described the rat in his experience as being "unstuck in time".

For those of you haven't read Slaughter House Five I highly recommend it along with Welcome to the Monkey House.

[The_Hoff]

If it were to be cyclical, wouldn't they possibly come back in other forms vs. their same forms? Could many of the past "Darhma" folks be the animals we see?

[chester]

The Sirens of Titan is a good one from Vonnegut too. He also influenced the writing of Chuck Palahnuik.

Check out 'Rant' for some further explorations of this cyclical time idea. In it, he suggests that.......

Maybe time isn't the fragile butterfly wing that most physicists make out, but more like a chain-link fence you can't hardly f*ck up.
Time's not like a line or sand flowing through an hourglass, but more like a book, with a beginning and an END, but one that's continuously being rewritten.
Time-travel is just openening up the book where-ever you want.
All of the most rich and powerful people do this, that's how they have become rich and powerful.

.....and stuff like that.

[stream]

Sirens of Titan was written by Vonneguts "fictional" sci-fi writer Kilgore Trout not Vonnegut himself ( or really being himself ) and if you are checkin out Vonnegut, dont forget Cats Cradle!
See part of the cyclic time thing was when he became unstuck, one of the places he jumped to was another planet where the beings kept him in a zoo, and eveentually he could communicate with them and they were the ones that had this way of looking at a whole life and it wasn't in a line like we like to think of time.

It brings to mind also the thing about time where it seems to go faster and slower depending on what you are doing or dreading, or anticipating, or trying to get done before time is up. Lately for me time has seemed to slip by real fast! Anybody else have this?