Contrasting Concepts of Time and Process : (Contemporary Implications)

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

It is proposed to examine in this paper selected implications of contrasting concepts of time and process, and to suggest that such concepts are central to the nature of that larger realm of what is called a peoples´ world-view. It is suggested that such an approach may be one way to address, and hopefully to clarify, certain dimensions of those current and tragic problems of polarizations across and within the multiple segments of the world´s populations. Examples of accelerating tensions and violence in this situation are all too evident in the contemporary proliferation of ideological revolutions, social, economic and political disruptions, all more or less interrelated with inevitable energy crises as nations vie for control over the world´s material resources that they may continue to build a world of diminishing returns upon the fragile and illusory foundation of the nonrenewable.
We are all familiar with those self-serving classification systems by which segments of humanity are identified according to First, Second, and Third worlds, now extended to Fourth and Fifth worlds due to the increasing complexities of our current global situation, We are also familiar with associated descriptive terms of less formal language; “developing”, “emerging”, “backward”, or non-literate/primitive, Suspicions are thus aroused that our labels and modes of classification do not just describe objective existential situations based, as we are informed, on the objective criteria of scientific and technological sophistication, possession and/or access to material natural resources, and quality or type of political system. What is actually projected, rather, are idiosyncratic value judgments, not to say latent prejudices, imposed upon world populations by the First or perhaps Second world proponents of such ranking systems.