Thursday, July 24, 2025

81st Birthday Blog: Personal Time

Personal Time:
My Annual Blog About Individual Time

"A Scholar in his Study,"
by Rembrandt van Rijn.
No one knows what this etching by Rembrandt is about. My interpretation is that it is of a scholar in his study when the brilliant flash of an idea suddenly comes to him.

Today I turn 81. And it's strange. It is an age I never thought I would experience. 

And now, the end is near
And so I face the final curtain
(Lyrics from My Way, words by Paul Anka
based on the music of the French song "Comme d'Habitude")

And unlike many things in life, there are few older people who can give me advice or perspective.

This age has made me both fearful and free. 
Why fearful? Because the end is near.
And why free? Because the end is near.

Yet I cannot know what or when will be the final curtain. 

What I do know is that

My friend[s], I'll say it clear
I've lived a life that's full
I traveled each and every highway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way
(Lyrics from My Way)

When I was in my thirties, I felt I had a lot to say, but that it would take many decades for me to put the pieces together, which seemed unlikely. I have always been interested in a wide variety of subjects, so fitting them together was not going to be easy.

Then in my late sixties I somehow sensed that I could put my ideas together with the help of the vast resources of the Internet. But even more, I realized that I could wait no longer. It was do or die. I either had to forget about making a statement or plunge in and get wet. 

The accepted thinking has always been that 30s, 40s, and maybe early 50s were the time for creative original thought. By the mid-sixties it was assumed it was all downhill from there. But, as I often did in my life, I ignored that and listened to the voices in my head that wanted to be expressed.

So, at the unlikely age of 68, I began writing this blog you are reading now, not knowing how it could evolve or even what I might say. I just knew that I had a lot of ideas, and maybe the task of writing an in-depth blog every month would result in some clarity. Hopefully, one idea would lead to another.

And lo and behold, that is what happened. It did take me about four years before I was fully up to speed, although I believe I came up with significant ideas before that. 

The central theme of this blog is about the human understanding and the human perception of time. I found I was able to write in depth about how our modern concept of linear time with a past, present, and future evolved from animal time, which is immediate and in the moment. It was/is this sense of time, I believe, that made our ability to plan and build possible, and was essential for the creation of our civilizations. 

In any case, even if people disagree with my conclusions, I feel I have asked important questions, questions that have not been addressed until now.

Then suddenly, in my mid-seventies, my ideas blossomed so that I was able to make important statements about the evolution and development of language, about technology, about civilization, and about how all this had come to pass. 

I took the leap for two reasons. The first was that I was afraid my ability to write and research would suffer as I got older, so I needed to act. Oddly, this has not been the case.

The second reason was that the time was finally right for me to say what I could say. I could write a free blog that reached a worldwide audience, I could research hundreds of millions of books and photographs in minutes, looking for specific ideas or evidence. And I could publish my work for free on academic websites to reach an academic audience. So in 2012 the themes I needed to hold my ideas were clear to me and now it was up to me to give them substance. Please read the Afterword for more about the themes that I worked on.

It was one of those times where opportunity presented itself and I jumped in -- not knowing whether I would live long enough.

To my astonishment, I have now been able to map out a fairly complete theory that covers human development starting in the early Paleolithic up to todays's world and also tomorrow's. I have written over 125 in-depth blogs which I republish on academic sites. The total number of page views after 12 years is approaching half a million, and I have over 1200 followers on an academic site, academia.edu. So I must be doing something right.

If only one of my major ideas becomes part of mainstream thought, then what I have written will be significant. Altogether, there are about ten major ideas -- so who knows what the fate of these will be? What I do know is that people are reading my work and listening to my ideas. And that's what's important.

How many authors and thinkers live long enough to put down their complete thoughts and do it in such a way that their ideas can reach a large audience? This was a gift to me that I cannot take credit for.

I do, however, have a Master's degree, which gives me credibility. And I do take full credit for my ideas and for writing consistently for 12 years. But at the same time, I am very grateful for modern opportunities that gave me the essential tools, tools that had never existed before.

I have lived an independent life starting in my teens, so having the ability to express my ideas to a learned audience, but as an independent thinker, was a dream that became a reality.

But it's here where my journey differs from the song My Way.

I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
(Lyrics from My Way)

For some reason, I began to trust my intuitions, and they guided me. I learned to grab opportunities as they occurred and did some things that others said were impossible. 

Barborlaukis manor. 
While not in the southern US, it is similar
to the manor house we rented and the condition it was in.

For example, I rented an old drafty, inexpensive southern manor house way out in the country when I was getting my Master's degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I heated the house with wood. Every day, I drove 20 miles down back-roads in rickety cars that I learned to repair. I was never late for class. To pay the bills, I worked as a freelance photographer; I took the shots, developed the negatives, and made prints in a makeshift darkroom in the large manor house. After two years, I got my Master's degree in Communication with a minor in Anthropology without going into debt. Yet more than half of my fellow students never finished their degree -- even though their lives were less demanding. (BTW, I am not exaggerating.)

Louis Round Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina

That I could do such things gave me confidence, so as the years went by I took more chances, but they were always supported by rational thinking.

Now, today, somehow, the pieces have come together. 

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels...
Yes, it was my way.
(Lyrics from My Way)

______________________________

OVERVIEWS OF DOBLE'S THEORIES
ABOUT THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING OF TIME (HUT)

If you want an overview of my theories about time and the development of the human perception of time, the related development of technology, and the related development of language, here are three overviews that in length are small, medium, and large

_________________________
SMALL

KEY IDEAS
ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF
THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING OF TIME (HUT)
------ AN OVERVIEW ------
A quick overview of Rick Doble's theory
about the development of time concepts by humans
with specific points highlighted.

_________________________
MEDIUM

A HISTORIC TIMELINE 
ABOUT HUMAN CONCEPTS OF TIME 
------ AN OVERVIEW ------
That Includes Basket Weaving Technology
And the Development of Language

_________________________
LARGE

RICK DOBLE'S THEORY ABOUT 
THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING OF TIME (HUT)
------ AN OVERVIEW ------
A complete theory
From about 3 million years ago to the present day
Ideas from 10 years of articles in this blog about the human experience of time



____________________________________
AFTERWORD


UNFOLDING IDEAS -- MY EXPERIENCE, 2 EXAMPLES

I am an idea person. You might say I collect interesting or intriguing ideas, not knowing when they might be useful. 

I am also a history buff and try to make sense of how we humans developed. Staring at an early age, around 10 years old, I began to gather historical items, which I saved in a collection I called my museum. In particular, I had a smooth Neolithic stone ax head and a sharp, angled Paleolithic stone cutting tool.

LEFT: Paleolithic 'flake tools'.
RICHT: Neolithic polished tools.
Page 280, Volume 15 of the German illustrated encyclopedia Meyers Konversationslexikon, 4th edition (1885-1890).

When I was in college, taking the required Western Civilization course, two things stayed with me because they did not make sense: I knew there was more to their story. As it turned out, both of these things, fifty years later, would become major themes in this blog, and in my investigations after I did in-depth research.

The first idea was about the New Stone Age (the Neolithic), which was given that name because they made beautiful, polished tools. But even though these tools named it, no one knew why the tools were made that way. Fifty years later, I found the answer. They were extremely well made and well designed tools that worked much better than previous tools -- which was only discovered recently. Then after digging further, I discovered Neolithic tools were used for thousands of years during the time of the early civilizations and long after the Neolithic era had ended. This discovery in turn, led to months of research and then my idea that we have grossly misunderstood the Neolithic era. It was innovative, creative, and capable of extreme precision, all of which I could prove. This has become one of my main themes in my blogs.

About the radical change in time conception in the Neolithic
Misconceptions about the Neolithic

Prague Astronomical Clock 
"The Prague astronomical clock was installed in 1410...and is the oldest functioning Astronomical clock in the world." 
This 600-year-old clock and ones like it became central to European societies. This mechanism was made with gears and gearing that was derived from Ptolemy's astronomy, which he developed about 1200 years earlier. It shows not only the time but also the position of the Sun and Moon and the movement of the Zodiac

The second idea was about the astronomer, Ptolemy, who invented a complex system of circles within circles to explain the movement of the planets and the Earth. In my history class, the professor made fun of this system,, which was replaced by the much simpler geometry of Isaac Newton. But for some reason, I knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the dismissal of this system. When I looked into it, I found that while it was inaccurate, as its critics claimed, it was only off by one day every one hundred years! This meant that there was much more to Ptolemy's astronomy than my professor acknowledged or understood. Again, it became one of my major themes because it pointed to a modern arrogance that had not understood the Ptolemaic system, and secondly, that the system worked so well, it developed into the geometry of clocks, which developed into machines, which led to the modern world we live in now. 

How the Ptolemaic system led to machinery
Modern arrogance


THE BACK STORY TO 'MY WAY'

If you read the earlier part of this blog, you know that I am an idea person and also intuitive. 

I was lying in bed one night thinking about the different kind of blog post I would write for my birthday, a blog about personal time, when the opening lines of 'My Way' came to me clear as a bell, almost as though I actually heard it.

And now, the end is near
And so I face the final curtain
(Lyrics from My Way)

This is how I felt at that moment. I will be 81, and now the end is near.

So I listened to it on YouTube in different versions -- Sinatra's, of course, but also the cover by Elvis. And it struck me that there had to be an incredible back story for a song this powerful and that was performed differently but brilliantly by two of the greatest singers of the last 75 years,

And what a back story!

In June of 1968, Paul Anka bought the rights to the French song Comme d'Habitude, after hearing it accidentally on the radio when he was in France. He probably did not know what he was going to do with it (my guess), but thinking it had potential in English. He unsuccessfully tried to adapt it to English lyrics and came close to giving up the rights when his adaptation failed. Then things happened. Sinatra told Anka he was retiring and that the next album would be his last. Sinatra had asked Anka to write a song for him in the past, but Anka never had. Now Anka had a good reason to write an iconic song for his good friend, and so after talking with Sinatra about his retirement, Anka soon knocked off the song one night in December, in about four hours, starting after 1 AM. Anka said that when he wrote it, he knew Sinatra well enough that he could write it the way Sinatra spoke. 

He then immediately called Sinatra in Nevada at 5 AM New York time, where Anka was, but only 2 AM Las Vegas. Then he flew to Las Vegas, and Sinatra approved the song almost immediately. At the end of December, Sinatra recorded the song in one take! My Way was released as a single and  it was also the name for the album that Sinatra released in 1969.

I believe Anka wanted to write a classic song for his friend's last recording. In any case, the song hit a nerve and took off. It seemed to sum up what Sinatra had done over his long career.

And the story would end there, but there was more. Elvis Presley, who was known for his politeness, asked Anka if he could record My Way. Anka was a bit surprised and told Elvis that, yes, of course he could, but that it was not the kind of song Elvis normally performed. So starting in the early 70s, Elvis sang this in almost all of his concerts, which in retrospect seemed prophetic as Elvis died several years later at a young age. While the song was written for Sinatra, my own favorite is the Elvis version, which is both humble and reflective but also forthright.

Elvis version
Sinatra version

In any case we have a song with remarkable lyrics performed by two of the greatest performers of the last 75 years, and more, much more than that, we have two very different but superb versions.

BTW the song is a bit controversial. I believe the singer is not saying he is great or wonderful or even admirable, but rather that he stayed true to himself and his feelings. And this is only one person's perspective about evaluating the worth of a lifetime. But if you don't like it, then you're going 'Your Way' as you should.

BTW the lyrics and arrangement by Anka are equally brilliant, starting with the introductory single notes that sound a bit like a clock ticking -- after all, the song is in part about time and the end of a person's life. And then the brilliant first word (really), which is 'and'. Why is this word important? It's because it implies a continuation, i.e., a life that has continued up to this moment. Then in six words he clearly sets the stage for the rest of the song. "And now the end is near." 

"The unexamined life is not worth living."
Socrates





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