Time and Change

As we well know, behind the concepts and human perceptions of time and space are very strange phenomena indeed, and the relationships between these things can be just as strange and difficult to comprehend and describe. 

Nevertheless there are some indirect ways of representing these phenomena that can yield some interesting observations, which like wind animating the swaying trees, can indicate the flowing of something a little more inscrutable. 

For example, as time slips away, ones relation to change seems to slip with it, much like the relationship of distance with many different kinds of effects. It has been observed by historians that the more distant a given set of historic events and their relations, the more mellow and muted our impressions of such things as observers can be, and the better able we are to analyze such affairs without the attendant prejudice, which though always exists in our perceptions to some extent, at least exists less immediately and intensely as compared to being directly affected by a given event. 

Though even given this general tendency, some impressions can endure for quite a long time indeed. Say, for the people of a once great power, the collective perception and experience of those heights can endure for a long time, with declines and humiliations especially smarting for centuries or even thousands of years. When times get bad for people, you can see all sorts of rationalizations for undertaking some sort of compensatory conquest, with people tracing their lineages back to some illustrious power and arguing for a return to that former glory.

But anyway, it is clear enough that for most events passing through the present and then slipping into history, the intensity and feeling of one's participation in them does peak in closer temporal and spatial proximity to them. For example, discussions of the legacies of someone like Alexander the Great and then someone like Adolf Hitler are going to be very different; even comparing the two could be seen to be fraught and sensitive. And then living in the United States, it is difficult to evaluate someone like Donald Trump or Joe Biden without fielding some sort of personal human impression in the process. 

Part of this could have to do with the nature of thermodynamics of entropy. For the most part we're mostly aware that the flow of time cannot be reversed and that the more time passes, the more things change and the conditions we'd like to alter change with them until eventually the situation is not even recognizable. 

A small amount of spatial distance added to an event typically requires more energy to address it. Simply put, getting up to retrieve the TV remote literally takes more energy than just reaching for it. In the same way, the required energy for addressing a given state of affairs goes up as that state of affairs drifts organizationally further from the original point to be addressed, given that one's aims and intentions in addressing the issue haven't changed. 

This is even bound up in our motivations: if someone insults you there is plenty motivation to retaliate while the insult is fresh, and perhaps their behavior could be changed as a result. The more time passes however, the more internal processing has occurred, the less motivation to directly address the insult, and besides, trying to address it too much later could appear stilted and strange. Individuals do vary of course. 

Anyway, change is real of course. It just takes energy to do and it tends to be time sensitive. If someone steps on your foot and you say, "ow, remove your foot" and they move, that is real and immediate change. The issue gets bigger and more complex though, and more time passes, and well you need more energy to address it then. Past a certain point, it becomes something else entirely.