Ok, most of you had fair warning. Starting tomorrow, you’ll get a post from Timefulism every day for the next year, giving suggestions for what to be thankful for that day, and perhaps ways of building community around that gratitude. As you know, Timefulism maps the life of the universe onto a single year with this formula:

2032 – (1.06605715821^365-n + 365 – n)

Using this formula, the “timespan” of January 1 is nearly a billion years (-13.8B to -12.94B), but timespans decrease pretty rapidly — March 1 is about 20 million years (-316.8M to -297.2M), June 1 is about 55 thousand years (-879.3K to -824.7K), September 1 is about 150 years (540 BC to 387 BC), November 1 is about 4 years (1921 AD to 1925 AD), and the last days of the calendar, covering the last few years, are just over one year each. This post provides more explanation.

The daily entries will likely be based on events set forth in this chart – events that have contributed to our present, and which are therefore worthy of contemplation – but there will likely be deviations. If you have an idea for a post about an upcoming date, let me know, and I will probably suggest that you write a guest post on it (Timefulism is open source, after all). But if you don’t have time for that, I’ll be happy to give it a try.

Feel free also to forward posts to friends and encourage them to subscribe. If Substack asks you or them to pledge money, just say no. That not the point.

If I get better and quicker at it, I might start making youtube videos again. In fact, I’m making one for Jan. 1 — a guided meditation on the Big Bang. Of course, you’re supposed to close your eyes while meditating, so it’ll be up to you whether you decide to actually watch the video.

If you’re new to this Substack, the core of Timefulism is gratitude for Time and Luck, since Time and Luck can both be seen as “higher powers” that have given us everything we have. Our gratitude, in turn, should impel us to try to make the world an even better place for those we share it with and for those who come after us. There are introductions to aspects of Timefulism in the archive.

Happy New Year!

The post Timefulism 2025 appeared first on Timefulism: A New Religion.

Timefulism’s second system breaks the waking day into 64 fifteen-minute slices. That helps remind us of how much time we have in a day — much can be experienced, enjoyed, or accomplished in 15 minutes — and we get 64 such slices of time every single day. And between every two adjacent slices is “transition” which can further enhance our appreciation of time’s flow.

A great quote about time:

“Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward offered, for they are gone forever.” -Horace Mann (1796 – 1859)

Another great quote about time:

“You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the magic tissue of the Universe of your life. No one can take it from you. No one receives either more or less than you receive. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will, and you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get into debt. You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you.” -Arnold Bennett (1867 – 1931)

And saving the best for last:

“Time is not measured by clocks but by moments” – Author unknown; probably a greeting card writer.

In other words, rather than use time as a mere marker on an endless continuum, Timefulness reminds us that time — and life itself — is in the moments, and each day has the potential for many, many moments. And every “moment” that we are alive is a moment that we can and should cherish, be thankful for, and lovingly make use of.

While time itself is abstract, the 15 minute span between (e.g.) 2:30 and 2:45 pm on any given day is not.  It is a chunk — a portion of the “magic tissue . . . of our life.”  We possess it fully, and it is there for us to use however we see fit, subject to whatever commitments we had already made for it.  Subject to those commitments, we have the opportunity to convert that tissue into something — perhaps (1) an act of kindness that will live on after the moment is passed, (2) a new, useful, or pleasant memory trace (e.g. from deliberate learning or experience), (3) a new connection with another human being, (4) a contribution toward one’s long-term physical or mental health, or (5) a step or two of progress on the road to creation.

The key to developing a more personal relationship with time is to give each “chunk” of time during the day a unique identifier, so that you are aware of it while you are “in” it.  It’s not enough to say 2:30-2:45 p.m.  Those are just abstract numbers.  

The Japanese recognized this long ago.  They broke up each day into twelve chunks — six for daytime and six for nighttime.  And they associated each chunk with something tangible, real, and alive — an animal.  Here’s how they did it (from Wikipedia, describing “Traditional Japanese Time”):

Notice that the animals in Japanese time correspond exactly to those of the Chinese Zodiac. Here is a carving of the Chinese zodiac on the ceiling of the gate to Kushida Shrine in Fukuoka, Japan.

Remember that this is a 24-hour clock, consisting of 12 two-hour chunks. Although for the Japanese, the rabbit always began at dawn (resulting in changing hour lengths depending on the season), Timefulism starts the waking day with the rabbit from 6 am to 8 am, moves on to the dragon (8-10 am), etc.

Recognizing the press of modern life, Timefulism divides each of these two hour chunks of time into eight fifteen-minute “quartals,” and provides associations for each one, so as to make them more concrete, which in turn helps us remember and appropriately honor and cherish them as they go by.

There are practically unlimited systematic associations that one can come up with for any given 15-minute slice of the day, and many of these are demonstrated at the www.humanity.com website, but for now, let’s keep it simple and stick with Japanese time.

Remember that there are 64 15-minute chunks in a day. Since 64 is 8 squared, that means we can arrange our clock as a 64 squares within a larger square, just like a chessboard:

Timefulism’s daily clock starts at the upper left, at a8, at 6:00 a.m. and proceeds, 15 minutes at a time, across the 8th rank to the upper right square, h8, at 745 a.m.

While one might be tempted to “restart” the clock on the right side of the page each time, the “continuity” of time seems to demand that time go back and forth, such that we move from h8 (7:45 a.m.) to h7 (8:00 a.m.). Time then proceeds to the left, 15 minutes at a time, until a7, which is 9:45 a.m, and so on:

Going back and forth has the additional benefit of alternating between light and dark squares on the chessboard. Going back and forth this way is called “Boustrophedon”; there are ancient Greek scripts that do that (although they also use mirror images of the letters on alternativng lines), and there are also some modern usages. So from now on, rather than saying we’re going back and forth, we’ll say we’re proceeding “boustophedonically,” which is probably the longest word you will see today.

That leaves us with the question of how do we divide up an animal into 8 distinct parts without consulting a butcher. There are many possibilities, which I’m going to try to elaborate on in a later post; in the meantime I welcome any ideas. Here are two I’ve had so far:

1. Each rank can be viewed as a path that the designated animal traverses over the course of its two-hour tenure. I’ve already constructed “rooms” for each of the 64 squares of the chessboard (see humanity64.com) , and the animal could be visiting the relevant rooms. But I keep thinking that a simpler path — in nature — would be less cluttered and might have serve the same purpose. The rooms will fit into the system in some other way. Here is what Llama 3.1 spit out when I gave it a prompt for how I would visualize the nature path:That’s inconsistent with my prompt in numerous ways. I wanted it to (1) have the segments of the path alternating between being sunlit and being in a shadow (to corresponded to the light and dark squares of the chessboard, (2) to have flowers representing the colors of the rainbow, in order, on the right, and (3) to have marker posts for each segment, but not those planks that it came up with. But it’s a start, and helps convey the idea that the a two-hour chunk of time can be seen as a journey through nature, with changing scenery.
2. Either separately or in combination with the “path” idea, we can use the letters corresponding to the files (i.e. a-h) to create a adjective for the animal. E.g. on the “a-file,” the animal can be “astute,” on the b-file it can be “benevolent,” on the c-file it can be “courageous,” on the d-h files it can be “decent,” “even-handed,” “fun,” “grateful,” and “honest” (loosely based on the cardinal virtues and plus the theological virtues, with “fun” thrown in). Of course, we could use any adjectives we want (e.g. argyle, boring, crafty, dim, erratic, fair, grotesque, hairy), if they help to make the animals and their placement on the path more memorable.

That’s on the second system for now – we’ll explore the 64 “quartals” more in a subsequent post/newsletter.

The post Timefulism Basics Part III appeared first on Timefulism: A New Religion.

1. Timefulism uses the algorithm 2032 – (1.06605715821^365-n + 365 – n) to map each day of the year to a specific time in the history of the universe, where the long number starting with 1.066 is just the 365th root of 13.8 billion. Thus, the New Year starts with the Big Bang, at which point a day represents nearly a billion years. By the summer, early humans have come on the scene with days mapping to just a few thousand years, and by the fall we are well into recorded history, with days mapping to the hundreds, then tens, of years. The final days of the year map to just over a year each. The formula assumes that the end of human history will occur in 2030, as that is as good a guess as any for when Artificial Intelligence will wipe us out, take over nearly all of our tasks, or integrate with us. If human history goes beyond 2030, we’ll recalculate the formula with a new end date.
2. Thus, for any given day of the year, there is a period of historical time that all of humanity can ponder together on that day. Every day is therefore a potential “holiday” or at least a day of contemplation.
3. Because Timefulism is a decentralized religion, we do not expect there to be an “official” selection of holidays or days of contemplation. Adherents are free to celebrate and contemplate every day of the year; Timefulism just provides a framework for deciding what to celebrate or contemplate on any given day, so that at least some of us may be thinking about the same thing.
4. We hope that Timefulism will bring people together in person. Perhaps they would come together as study groups to hear each other’s perspectives on the meaning and significance of whatever it is we have to contemplate on a given day. Or perhaps people will gather as a congregation, to hear a “sermon” by someone who has thought deeply about a particular event from the corresponding historical period and what meaning it should have for us.
5. Our Calendar of Contemplation gives a pretty good sense of what some of Timefulism’s holidays could be. Of course, some of the dates will shift as new geological, archaeological, and/or historical findings are made, but as with everything else in this religion, nothing is set in stone. The segment of the Calendar of Contemplation that covers 100,000 BC to 1 BC, and maps to July 5 to September 4, is reproduced at the end of this newsletter.
6. We’ve put up videos on the domestication of dogs (7/28), the invention of baked bread and the sandwich (short form and long form) (8/4), and the first metal mining and use of cattle for dairy (8/12). We’ll see if we can maintain the one-a-week pace. Obviously, in a study group or a sermon, these issues, events, and time periods can be studied much more deeply.

4. Again, the Calendar of Contemplation is just one of four current “systems” within Timefulism. Considerable work has to be done to develop it as well as the other systems, and to figure out how to combine them (and other ideas and systems) into an integrated whole.
5. The ultimate goal, as always, will be to use the systems to help people identify as historically-grounded, socially-conscious, caring human beings, and to create groups and/or communities of people that hold similar values and share similar beliefs.
6. Starting January 1, 2025, we’ve been writing a blog post for every day of the year, expressing gratitude or awe at the events that happened in the corresponding Time-Span. Those posts are copied here, and are also viewable on Substack here.
7. Here is the current draft of the segment of the Calendar that covers about 100,000 BC to 1 BC, and maps onto July 5 to September 4. If any reader of this post feels like making a video about any event on the calendar (or any other event in the history of the Universe), go for it! (And please let us know, so that we can promote it.)

PS A working draft of he full calendar is available at Humanity64.com. It will be updated over the course of 2025, and moved to the Timefulism website.

The post Timefulism Basics Part II: Days of Contemplation appeared first on Timefulism: A New Religion.

The mission of Timefulism is to bring people and communities together in gratitude for the bounties that have been bestowed upon us by Time and Luck, and to work to ensure that those bounties are shared more equally by all of humanity. This post will begin to explore how we will ultimately achieve that goal.

Why Time and Luck?

It’s simple. Time and Luck are something we all share.

Time marks our place in the universe — this infinitesimally small series of moments we call “Life.”

Luck is what brought each of us and all of us here in the first place. Through almost the entire history of the universe, our ancestors were the exact same set of individuals. And it is our Good Luck that each of those millions of ancestors survived predators, disease, starvation, inhospitable climates, mass extinctions, and just plain bad luck to reproduce and contribute to the line that has led to all of us.

In a sense Time and Luck are the parents of evolution — not just of humanity as a species, but of all life, of the earth, the sun, and the universe itself.

Everybody alive today on this planet is a child of Luck and Time — we all are here, sharing this moment in Time, because of Luck.

The Current Four Systems for Reenvisioning Space and Time

At present, Timefulism offer us two systems for improving our relationship with Time, and two more systems for improving our relationship with Space, which, of course, is closely related to time. The goal is to use these systems to bring people together in support of the mission described above.

Each of the systems will be explored in more detail in subsequent posts. But here is an overview:

Calendar of Contemplation: Using a time compression algorithm, we have mapped the entire life-span of the universe onto a 365-day year, such that January 1 covers nearly the first billion years of the universe, and the last few days of the year each covers a bit more than the previous year. Thus, any given day of the year can be a “day of contemplation,” when we sit back and contemplate what was happening during the day’s corresponding historical period and how it helped bring us to where we are today. This supports the mission by bringing people together in contemplation, gratitude, and/or awe of the events that have shaped our world.

Discretization Clock (in search of a better name): This is the idea of breaking a day into discrete slices of 15 minutes each, and marking transitions between slices, as opposed to simply letting time run by. Drawing on Traditional Japanese Time, the transitions between 2-hour slices receive special attention. Each 15 minute “slice” of time has various associations that provide fuel for contemplation during the slice itself and during transitions. The goal is to help us develop a more concrete and personalized relationship with our time, arguably our most precious possession. Rituals relating to the discretization clock can remind us that we all live in and share the same moments of time.

A New Geography: Recognizing that reliance on GPS tends to divorce us from the broader context of space, this is a system that divides the Earth into 64 squares, created by the intersections of 8 lines of longitude (180 W/E, 135W, 90W, 45 W, 0, 45E, 90E, 135E) with 7 lines of latitude (67.5N, 45N, 22.5N, 0, 22.5S, 45S, 67.5S). Each square is subdivided into a further 64 squares, such that any location on earth can be identified by a series of squares. Rituals relating to the new geography can remind us of our shared home and also of the connection between space and time, as the Earth itself functions as a clock, by counting out the days and the years.

A New Star Map: This an extrapolation of the “New Geography,” and is based on a parallel recognition that reliance on star-gazing apps causes us to lose touch with the broader context of what we are looking at. The star map is an imaginary sphere with the sun at the center, as used in the galactic coordinate system. The sphere, and thus the universe, is divided into 64 fixed “squares” or “windows” such that (1) any given fixed star (and therefore any constellation) has a precise and fixed location within any given window (discounting the drift that will inevitably occur as the sun completes its orbit around the Milky Way), (2) the windows visible from a given location on Earth will change as the Earth orbits the sun.

Thus, any location in the universe can be instantly understood to belong to a particular square/window, and can be located more precisely via a series of windows, each of which is divided by a 64-square lattice. The particular windows that are visible for a particular night at a particular location on Earth will be readily calculated via an app on your phone. Once you have a sense of the windows, you’ll have a very good sense of what the night sky will look like and how it will be proceeding on any given evening, and over the course of the seasons, just as your ancestors did. Rituals relating to the star map can remind us of our place in the broader universe and the fabric of space-time.

Looking forward

These are just the current ideas for “systems.” They all need to be developed and supplemented with appropriate rituals for bringing us closer to time, luck, space, and each other. And of course, they are not exclusive — other systems and rituals for implementing the concepts of Timefulism are possible; Timefulism aspires to be an open source religion.

The post Timefulism Basics Part I: Overview appeared first on Timefulism: A New Religion.

Timefulism 

Days of Contemplation

Timefulism

A Calendar of Days of Contemplation. This is based on Alain de Botton’s observation that churches are vastly better than atheism at promoting community and togetherness through shared rituals, gatherings, and holidays.

1. • Timefulism uses the algorithm 2032 – (1.06605715821^365-n + 365 – n) to map each day of the year to a specific time in the history of the universe, where the long number starting with 1.066 is just the 365th root of 13.8 billion. Thus, the New Year starts with the Big Bang, at which point a day represents nearly a billion years. By the summer, early humans have come on the scene with days mapping to just a few thousand years, and by the fall we are well into recorded history, with days mapping to the hundreds, then tens, of years. The final days of the year map to just over a year each. The formula assumes that the end of human history will occur in 2030, as that is as good a guess as any for when Artificial Intelligence will wipe us out, take over nearly all of our tasks, or integrate with us. If human history goes beyond 2030, we’ll recalculate the formula with a new end date.

1. • Thus, for any given day of the year, there is a period of historical time that all of humanity can ponder together on that day. Every day is therefore a potential “holiday” or at least a day of contemplation.

1. • Because Timefulism is a decentralized religion, we do not expect there to be an “official” selection of holidays or days of contemplation. Adherents are free to celebrate and contemplate every day of the year; Timefulism just provides a framework for deciding what to celebrate or contemplate on any given day, so that at least some of us may be thinking about the same thing.

1. • We hope that Timefulism will bring people together in person. Perhaps they would come together as study groups to hear each other’s perspectives on the meaning and significance of whatever it is we have to contemplate on a given day. Or perhaps people will gather as a congregation, to hear a “sermon” by someone who has thought deeply about a particular event from the corresponding historical period and what meaning it should have for us.

1. • Our Calendar of Contemplation gives a pretty good sense of what some of Timefulism’s holidays could be. Of course, some of the dates will shift as new geological, archaeological, and/or historical findings are made, but as with everything else in this religion, nothing is set in stone. The segment of the Calendar of Contemplation that covers 100,000 BC to 1 BC, and maps to July 5 to September 4, is reproduced at the end of this newsletter.

1. • We’ve now put up videos on the domestication of dogs (7/28), the invention of baked bread and the sandwich (short form and long form) (8/4), and the first metal mining and use of cattle for dairy (8/12). The video department is on hold for the time being in favor of text posts.

4. • Again, the Calendar of Contemplation is just one of four current “systems” within Timefulism. Considerable work has to be done to develop it as well as the other systems, and to figure out how to combine them (and other ideas and systems) into an integrated whole.

4. • The ultimate goal, as always, will be to use the systems to help people identify as historically-grounded, socially-conscious, caring human beings, and to create groups and/or communities of people that hold similar values and share similar beliefs.

4. • Here is the current draft of the segment of the Calendar that covers about 100,000 BC to 1 BC, and maps onto July 5 to September 4. If any reader of this post feels like making a video about any event on the calendar (or any other event in the history of the Universe), go for it! (And please let us know, so that we can promote it.)

PS A version of the full calendar is available at Humanity64.com, Some of that stuff needs to be improved and moved to the Timefulism website.

PPS As noted on Humanity64.com, the vast majority of the event dates and events on this table are borrowed from Professor C. Patrick Doncaster’s wonderful “timeline of the human condition,” for which we intend to thank him some day, perhaps after Timefulism is a bit more established. Note that his timeline includes much more information than ours, and repays close reading and clicking around.

The post appeared first on Timefulism: A New Religion.

Timefulism is a new religion that gives expression to the debt of gratitude that humanity owes to time and luck, through the observance of holidays that celebrate periods and moments in humanity’s history, which is also the history of the universe.

Mission

The mission of Timefulism is to bring people and communities together in gratitude for the bounties that have been bestowed upon us by Time and Luck, and to work to ensure that those bounties are shared more equally by all of humanity. This post will begin to explore how we will ultimately achieve that goal.

Why Time and Luck?

It’s simple. Time and Luck are something we all share.

Time marks our place in the universe — this infinitesimally small series of moments we call “Life.”

Luck is what brought each of us and all of us here in the first place. Through almost the entire history of the universe, our ancestors were the exact same set of individuals. And it is our Good Luck that each of those millions of ancestors survived predators, disease, starvation, inhospitable climates, mass extinctions, and just plain bad luck to reproduce and contribute to the line that has led to all of us.

In a sense Time and Luck are the parents of evolution — not just of humanity as a species, but of all life, of the earth, the sun, and the universe itself.

Everybody alive today on this planet is a child of Luck and Time — we all are here, sharing this moment in Time, because of Luck.

The Current Four Systems for Reenvisioning Space and Time

At present, Timefulnism offer us two systems for improving our relationship with Time, and two more systems for improving our relationship with Space, which, of course, is closely related to time. The goal is to use these systems to bring people together in support of the mission described above.

Each of the systems will be explored in more detail in subsequent posts. But here is an overview:

Calendar of Contemplation: Using a time compression algorithm, we have mapped the entire life-span of the universe onto a 365-day year, such that January 1 covers nearly the first billion years of the universe, and the last few days of the year each covers a bit more than the previous year. Thus, any given day of the year can be a “day of contemplation,” when we sit back and contemplate what was happening during the day’s correponding historical period and how it helped bring us to where we are today. This supports the mission by bringing people together in contemplation, gratitude, and/or awe of the events that have shaped our world.

Discretization Clock (in search of a better name): This is the idea of breaking a day into discrete slices of 15 minutes each, and marking transitions between slices, as opposed to simply letting time run by. Drawing on Traditional Japanese Time, the transitions between 2-hour slices receive special attention. Each 15 minute “slice” of time has various associations that provide fuel for contemplation during the slice itself and during transitions. The goal is to help us develop a more concrete and personalized relationship with our time, arguably our most precious possession. Rituals relating to the discretization clock can remind us that we all live in and share the same tme moments of time.

A New Geography: Recognizing that reliance on GPS tends to divorce us from the broader context of space, this is a system that divides the Earth into 64 squares, created by the intersections of 8 lines of longitude (180 W/E, 135W, 90W, 45 W, 0, 45E, 90E, 135E) with 7 lines of latitude (67.5N, 45N, 22.5N, 0, 22.5S, 45S, 67.5S). Each square is subdivided into a further 64 squares, such that any location on earth can be identified by a series of squares. Rituals relating to the new geography can remind us of our shared home and also of the connection between space and time, as the Earth itself functions as a clock, by counting out the days and the years.

A New Star Map: This an extrapolation of the “New Geography,” and is based on a parallel recognition that reliance on star-gazing apps causes us to lose touch with the broader context of what we are looking at. The star map is an imaginary sphere with the sun at the center, as used in the galactic coordinate system. The sphere, and thus the universe, is divided into 64 fixed “squares” or “windows” such that (1) any given fixed star (and therefore any constellation) has a precise and fixed location within any given window (discounting the drift that will inevitably occur as the sun completes its orbit around the Milky Way), (2) the windows visible from a given location on Earth will change as the Earth orbits the sun.

Thus, any location in the universe can be instantly understood to belong to a particular square/window, and can be located more precisely via a series of windows, each of which is divided by a 64-square lattice. The particular windows that are visible for a particular night at a particular location on Earth will be readily calculated via an app on your phone. Once you have a sense of the windows, you’ll have a very good sense of what the night sky will look like and how it will be proceeding on any given evening, and over the course of the seasons, just as your ancestors did. Rituals relating to the star map can remind us of our place in the broader universe and the fabric of space-time.

Looking forward

These are just the current ideas for “systems.” They all need to be developed and supplemented with appropriate rituals for bringing us closer to time, luck, space, and each other. And of course, they are not exclusive — other systems and rituals for implementing the concepts of timefulism are possible; Timefulism aspires to be an open source religion.

The post Timefulism appeared first on Timefulism: A New Religion.