Riffs off a dead German

The problem of Time, like that of Destiny, has been completely misunderstood by all thinkers who have confined themselves to the systematic of the Become. In Kant's celebrated theory there is not one word about its character of directedness. Not only so, but the omission has never even been noticed. But what is time as a length, time without direction? Everything living, we can only repeat, has "life," direction, impulse, will, a movement-quality (Bewegtheit) that is most intimately allied to yearning and has not the smallest element in common with the "motion" (Bewegung) of the physicists. The living is indivisible and irreversible, once and uniquely occurring, and its course is entirely indeterminable by mechanics. For all such qualities belong to the essence of Destiny, and "Time" that which we actually feel at the sound of the word, which is clearer in music than in language, and in poetry than in prose has this organic essence, while Space has not.  Time is a discovery of high cultures.

                                                                           

                                                                                Quote from: Spengler vol I p.122

I think that Ozzie is on to something here, but as usual, it comes filtered through the German and that makes it unnecessarily difficult.

Like everything that one reads, you have to spend time filing off the edges and interpreting the words to allow it to fit into a mental model that doesn't contradict itself too much.

I spent forty years of my life being concerned with the Bewegung of the physicists.   Of late, I seem to be slipping away from that path.  Like it or not (and I am not super fond of the idea), the restraints of the material have led us into a world where the individual has no meaning.  I am trying to break free of the restraints placed upon me by the "scientific worldview" but the project is daunting and my progress seems to be well leavened by regressions.

I can't say I have any desire to become some kind of mystic or occultist.  It really doesn't interest me much.  I just want to understand the world we live in beyond the superficial level of "what's in it for me" that is the basis of western thought.  I don't want to effect it, I don't want to control it, I don't even want to presage the future.  I just want to have a better idea of what is going on.