I let myself be swept into a rolling video scroll on Twitter accidentally today. You may know the awful dark pattern that occurs when you choose to watch a video posted by a mutual in the For You flow. It then sends you down a scroll of videos content chosen by algorithm.
Typically it’s dross and I’m sure the account meant to show this particular video to me for nefarious theory of mind reasons but I found it enlightening. I was sent to young African woman breaking down an epistemology of time in African religion and philosophy by Kenyan scholar and Anglican priest John Mbiti.
John Mbiti’s philosophy of time presents a distinctive African conception of temporality that fundamentally differs from Western linear time concepts…Mbiti argues that African time is two-dimensional, consisting only of the past and present, with virtually no future. – Perplexity Synopsis
Only present entities exist, while past and future things do not. Crimping from video and Wikipedia.
“Sasa (the now) and Zamani (the endless past) are the central concepts in Mbiti’s temporal framework.”
Being western Protestant myself, lacking an epistemology or ontology for a “real” future that arrives feels sad to me even if rationally I know I am only ever experiencing the now.
You can say I only “know” the “now” as it’s all I’ve ever experienced. We call this theory of time Presentism.
Sasa is now in Swahili. Which took me to a funny place as I thought of the use of sasa in the sci fi series The Expanses’s invented Belter creole for “to know.”
One can easily argue that all we know is the now which makes “sasa” as “now” and “sasa” “to know” easily bridged. I wonder if the linguist who created the patois knew this.
Sasa makes a mathematical sense to me as I live in 3 dimensions but know the 4th dimension of time to exist but only “know” time as “now”
Nevertheless I myself am quite interested in the future arriving. So I have put together a ham fisted Belter sentence of my own as I wish for everyone to experience more future time
“Mi sasa da future gonya kome. Me kopeng wedi da way long day”