Sequoia Time: a tool for solving sequoia-scale problems

In an experiment, I posted a brief reflection on Sequoia Time on hitRECord. Here it is…

Towering nearly one-hundred feet above me, and below an additional two-hundred feet of living wood, grew a single branch larger in diameter than any tree east of the Mississippi River. Even more impressive, the branch’s bearer had seen the surrounding wood arise over a period spanning three millennia. Standing in the shadow of such a giant, I experienced the sequoia as a connective tissue, transcending the traditional boundaries of the human life span and time measured on a human scale.

I imagined time as it might appear from a sequoia’s perspective, a frame of reference I refer to as sequoia time.

Hypothesis: Many of the recurring problems faced by humanity (wars, segregation, bigotry and others) arise due to a combination of the human tendency to accept a given truth only once having experienced it firsthand and a lack of accessible recorded information about the missteps of our ancestors. To overcome these sequoia-scale issues, we must think in sequoia time.

If you have comments, please share them on Twitter — @mch82 #SequoiaTime. For more on Sequoia Time, check out my original essay on Sequoia Time from 2001. It’s a little wordy and academic, but I still think it’s worth a look.