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Year Zero

Sotthi

I got this as a forward, would like to fwd. it here as well.

Traditionalists talk as if they are the only ones with a 'tradition'.

However, it is the case that most ideologies have their own traditions.

What interests me here is where your tradition begins.
I call this your Year Zero.

It is the point of departure for your tradition, it is your eternal reference point.

It is where you return to and it is what provides you with a model of perfection for your tradition: it is your Ideal.

It may be Mythic, or it may be Historical [or both].

It could be Atlantis; it could be the birth of Jesus; it could be the first Egyptian Pharoah; it could be the reign of Charlemagne; it could be pre-Raphael; it could be the Renaissance; it could be a great army's march; the death of someone eminent; it could be The Flood; it could be the Big Bang, the invention of a scientific technology, etc., etc.,

It could be a personal landmark, or a very obscure happening.

It could even be reversed and so pertain to a future Golden Age as well as to a past Golden Age.

This Year Zero is your anchor - and it is also your limitation.

Today I was thinking, whether we be Christian, Agnostic, Pagan or Atheist, or whatever, we say that the year is 2006.
This means even to a pagan or an atheist, even he regards the now as the two-thousandth & sixth year since the birth of Christ!

Of course, some Pagans have tried to bring in a new Year Zero - the Runic Era [RE] about 250 years before Christ's birth.
By that reckoning pagans now are in the year 2256 Runic.

The late writer Thorolf Wardle took the battle of Teutoburg as his Year Zero [this was 9 years after Christ's birth], calling it "after Teutoburg" or 'a.T', making this year 1997 a.T. (!)

So I am wondering if you all'd care to share on what you regard as your markers, your year zero?

 
Aug 13, 06 7:06 am
Nevermore

I guess my zero year would be the year 2003 .Thats when I Finally got my arch degree. So In terms of personal discovery, I am a 3 year old tot !

Ta !

Aug 13, 06 10:14 am  · 
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Sotthi

Babbbe...!


lol, but seriously, that makes for another interesting question;

@ all,

your first love of architecture - when, what and where?

A building/monument that affected you to want to become an architect or one that affects you now to make you value you are one.

Aug 13, 06 6:43 pm  · 
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scarface

interesting question.

i have lots of year zeroes.

The invention of the www internet, makes my profession that much more innovative. Where would design be without 3-d?

Then would be the day I met my best friend whom I love more than my wife! hehehe and also when i first held my one day old daughter.

who's serious about runeworks, man!

future golden age would be when my bank account touches a nice seven figure. yup.

Aug 23, 06 8:02 am  · 
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BOTS

My girlfriend often laughs when I say that I can remember events from when I was one year old (most can remember early events from 3 years old).

I can go back a bit further as I can remember my first anatomical enclosure of space – the womb, self consciousness was realised upon conception. Before that nothing existed and the current reality has been crafted to entertain my own existence.

Aug 23, 06 8:36 am  · 
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Sotthi

@scarface, kind of you to share; that was very nice hearing.

@BOTS, I can too. To one year and very sharp.
In Buddhism, its believed, with the right training, you can remember all your previous lives too!
(Flatliners?)

Aug 23, 06 2:54 pm  · 
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Nevermore

@ BOTS and Sotthi,

I have one memory when I was around 3-6 months old ,of my mum playing a silly game with me.

I tell her abt it and she laughs it off saying I'm joking ( BOTS . like you'r girlfriend does )
but when I describe the events in detail, she's stunned and cant but help agree that I'm not making it up.


BOTS ( jokes aside ),You are right , I have a psychiatrist friend , I asked him about this thing,
He told me that normal human memory is so evolved that its designed to forget anything previous to 3 years. At the age of 3 , the 'EGO' is born and before age of 3 its just the pure nascent personality of the individual.(Thats why the magic age of 3 )

It's very rare that people can remember < 3 yrs old but if you'r the rare case like the 3 of us , It means your brain has kinda "backfired".
'the normal valves of memory and perception have been compromised.'.

It's slightly dangerous in the sense that the mind is then capable of very great insights,focus and judgements.
but it also makes the mind comparitively more vulnerable to insanity and schizophrenia if stretched.

Hmm
so take care guys.


Aug 24, 06 3:16 am  · 
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BOTS

we are in the territory of genius vs madness

Aug 24, 06 3:44 am  · 
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Nevermore

sure..isnt that what genius/madness is about !..to think without boundaries and parameters !
swimming clear of the unessentials and straight to the heart of the matter.

Aug 24, 06 4:51 am  · 
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Nevermore

sorry for digressing from the content of this post but since we're on the topic

This novel is one of the most beautiful I've read

-->"Diary of a Madman " by Nikolai Gogol.

It's a tragic tale of an heartbroken man's journey into insanity and in the end how he finds honour ,not in the real world but amidst the delusions of his insane mind.

good stuff !

Aug 24, 06 7:07 am  · 
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Sotthi

3 months. Nevermore, that is amazing.

> He told me that normal human memory is so evolved that its designed to forget anything previous to 3 years. At the age of 3 , the 'EGO' is born and before age of 3 its just the pure nascent personality of the individual.(Thats why the magic age of 3 )

Hmm.

The Punsavana ritual is performed by Hindus during the 3rd month of pregnancy; they believe the fetus comes into consciousness during its 4th or 5th month.
In Germanic beliefs, the Hamr is thought to develop when the child is in the womb and its karmic Fetch (ancestral memory) is supposed to attach itself within 9 days - hence the naming was done on that day.

3, 9 - I think Yeats wrote a poem on this kind of Lunar gestation.


> swimming clear of the unessentials and straight to the heart of the matter.

Nice metaphors!


@BOTS,

Genius is in the holding together of the madness, the chaos of the stars inside oneself. If the madman is an oar going beneath the sea, the genius is one who knows how to draw in and away from the currents.

"The highest goods come to us by way of madness." [Phaidros (244a)]

"Sacred madness is highest human manifestation." [Holderlin]

The Genius gives a Name to what the Mad can see or experience. Then its called Originality.

Genius is an alchemical work on all the possibilities that arise only to the Mad.

Aug 24, 06 9:38 am  · 
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Sotthi

Nevermore, I've read that long long back. Yea, its great, and I love the surrealist depth in his satire, 'Nos'.

One of my favourite lines -

"I am destined by the mysterious powers to walk hand in hand with my strange heroes, viewing life in all its immensity as it rushes past me, viewing it through laughter seen by the world and tears unseen and unknown by it." (N.Gogol)

Aug 24, 06 9:38 am  · 
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