
Lately, I’ve been gnawing on this “time is a flat circle” nonsense, like a dog chewing on a bone that’s already been chewed into oblivion.
And you know who loves this idea? The ones who have way too much time on their hands and are probably neck-deep in Netflix shows, thinking they’ve cracked the code to existence because they watched a couple of episodes of True Detective and think Matthew McConaughey is some kind of oracle.
Yeah, those folks. They think we’re all stuck in this eternal loop, doomed to relive the same mistakes, the same stupid shit, over and over again like some cosmic glitch.
It’s a miserable thought, and sure, it sounds all deep and tragic to some, like they’re trying to read Dostoevsky while drunk at 3 a.m. It’s the perfect cocktail for people who are too bored with their own lives to face reality.
But here’s the truth—let me clear the air for you, because I’ve spent too many hours staring into the void myself.
Time? It’s not some flat circle. It’s not some endless hamster wheel where we’re running and running and never getting anywhere.
That’s just wishful thinking for people who can’t face the fact that time is a straight line, a goddamn one-way ticket to whatever’s next.
It’s moving forward, baby, whether you like it or not. You can stand there all you want, trying to go backward, but time doesn’t give a shit.
It’s a cruel, heartless bastard of a thing, laughing at you as it drags you to your grave, one tick at a time.
Now, I get it.
The whole idea of time being a flat circle is comforting in a way. It makes you feel like maybe there’s some cosmic purpose to all the crap you’re stuck in.
Maybe you’ll get another shot at life, maybe you’ll make different choices next time.
But that’s a hell of a fantasy, and let me tell you, that shit ain’t real. Life doesn’t work like that. You don’t get a rerun. You get one shot, and then the curtain falls.
And yeah, it’s a hard pill to swallow. It’s a big, dry, nasty pill, like trying to choke down a rock while someone’s laughing at you.
But time doesn’t wait for you to get it together. It just keeps moving, like a freight train with no brakes, taking you somewhere, anywhere, and you’d better hold on.
A Straight Line, No More, No Less
Circles are neat. Clean. They give you that cozy sense of closure, like finishing a drink you’ve been nursing for hours. But life? Life’s messier than that. Life doesn’t wrap itself up nicely at the end. It’s a straight line, even if it feels like it’s spiraling into oblivion most of the time.
We progress, and sometimes we regress, but that doesn’t mean we’re stuck in a loop, eternally vomiting up our past mistakes. We move forward, goddammit.
Take the analogy of a good story.
A novel isn’t a circle—it’s a line. The hero starts somewhere, he struggles, he faces challenges, and at the end, we hope—though we know better—that he finds some meaning or redemption.
If life were cyclical, we’d be stuck on the same page, repeating the same chapter over and over again like some poor, half-drunk soul stumbling through the same bar every night.
You’d think you were getting somewhere, but you wouldn’t. It’s a loop, an endless loop of nothing. Life is more than that. It has to be.
Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence
Nietzsche, that lovable nihilist with a penchant for declaring God dead, is the usual suspect when we talk about eternal recurrence.
His idea was that the universe—everything—repeats infinitely.
Everything you do, everything you’ve ever felt, will come back again, forever. It’s like being stuck in a bad song that never ends, playing over and over until you can’t stand it anymore.
His idea sounds clever in a dark, romantic way, but when you dig deeper, it falls apart.
What’s the point of doing anything if it’s all doomed to repeat itself, eternally?
If you’re buying into Nietzsche’s cyclical universe, where every joy and suffering comes back in some eternal loop, then why bother?
Why struggle? Why try to find meaning if you’re just doomed to repeat it forever? It makes the whole thing seem pointless.
To say it plainly: Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence is a thought experiment for the bored and disillusioned, a way to feel a little extra pain when the regular kind doesn’t hit hard enough.
If life is an endless cycle, it’s not really living—it’s just existing, dragging your feet through a loop of apathy.
And that’s the kind of existential hole I’m not digging myself into. I’ve been there, sure. I’ve looked into the abyss and wondered if it looked back. But I’m done with it. I’m done with the pointless repetition.
Reincarnation: Another Round of Heartache?
While we’re at it, let’s tear down the whole reincarnation myth too.
Reincarnation is a philosophical escape hatch for people who can’t face the brutal truth: our time is limited, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Reincarnation says your soul gets a “do-over.” But here’s the thing—if you’ve lived before, how come you don’t remember it? If reincarnation were real, we’d be loaded with memories, like a junkie who can’t forget his highs. Instead, we get this weird amnesia, and we’re told, “Don’t worry, you’ll get it right next time.”
But what if there is no next time. There’s this one. And if we screw it up, we live with the consequences. Simple as that.
We don’t get to wake up as someone else after we die. You don’t get a mulligan. Life’s not a game of golf. So stop pretending that you know you’ll somehow get a second chance.
The Scientific Break on Eternal Recurrence
Alright, let’s throw a little science into the mix. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some PhD-wielding scientist. But I’ve got a nose for bullshit, and I can smell it a mile away.
So here’s what the brainy folks say about time: It’s not some endless loop. It’s more like a straight line. A beginning, a middle, and then—eventually—an end. That’s the basic idea.
Now, I’m sure you’ve heard of the second law of thermodynamics. It’s the law that tells us things don’t stay neat and tidy.
They fall apart. Everything in this universe is slowly, inevitably, moving from order to chaos. Like your favorite old bar getting torn down, or a once-lovely building crumbling into rubble. It’s not some romantic idea of eternal repetition—it’s the slow march of decay.
If time were a loop, if we were really stuck in a cycle of endless repetition, things would have to reset. They’d have to start fresh every time. But they don’t. The universe isn’t hitting the reset button. It’s moving toward something much darker, much more final: the heat death.
The heat death of the universe—that’s the real kicker. It means everything, all the stars, all the planets, every single thing you know, will just fizzle out. Burn out. Disintegrate. It’s like the world slowly dying in your arms while you watch it all slip away, with no chance of revival. That’s not a cycle, that’s a one-way trip to nowhere.
So if time really worked like some cosmic record that keeps playing the same tune, we’d be breaking the laws of thermodynamics.
It’d be like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. No matter how hard you try, it just doesn’t fit. It never will.
That’s enough for me to throw out the idea of eternal recurrence and accept a simpler, bleaker truth: time’s a straight line.
It’s all downhill from here. And that’s grim, sure—but at least it’s real.
Disagreeing with Rustin Cohle: A Fatalistic View of Consciousness
Alright.
It’s time to rip apart the nihilistic garbage that drips from the mouth of Rustin Cohle, the True Detective.
In one of his brilliant rants, Cohle says:
“I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self-aware; nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself… We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, a secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody’s nobody.”
Now, look, I’m not a pro philosopher, but this is some heavy, self-pitying nonsense.
You ever hear a line that sounds deep at first, but after five minutes, you realize it’s just a sad guy whining because life’s tough?
This is that. And here’s the truth: consciousness is not some cursed plague. It’s a damn gift.
You know what it means to be self-aware? It means we’re alive. That’s all we’ve got, and that’s more than enough.
You can argue all you want that we’re “programmed” to believe we’re “somebody” in a world that’s indifferent. But here’s where the nihilistic thinkers like Cohle get it wrong: they miss the point that being alive, with all the mess and chaos, is the point.
We don’t have to have everything figured out. The fact that we’re aware at all—that we can feel joy, pain, love, anger—that’s what makes it worth the ride.
Sure, it’s brutal, it’s confusing, and sometimes you want to just punch the world in the face, but it’s also ours.
We’re not an accidental joke; we matter. And we sure as hell aren’t destined to fade away in some big existential puddle.
Now, don’t get me wrong—I’ve been there. I’ve spent nights drowning in whiskey, staring into the abyss, wondering if maybe, just maybe, it would be easier to just tap out.
But let’s not kid ourselves: that’s the easy way out. And who wants to be called a coward?
Cohle got this romantic notion of giving up, but the truth is, that’s exactly what nihilism is—giving up before the fight even starts.
The real fight is about saying, “Yeah, life’s tough. But I’m still here, and I’m going to make something of it.” Even if it’s a mess. Even if there’s no big cosmic meaning behind it.
So what? Who needs the answers when we’ve got the chance to live the questions?
And let’s talk about why this nihilistic crap keeps popping up.
Because it sells, that’s why. People are glued to this show, and every other show that sprinkles a little nihilism into the mix.
You think it’s just a coincidence? Nah. Creators know that if they drop a little nihilistic atom into our brains, they’ll have us hooked. It’s like a drug. We all want to feel like the world’s falling apart, like there’s no hope, because deep down, some part of us believes it.
They exploit that. They sell the pain, the emptiness, and the idea that nothing matters. Because, let’s face it, nihilism gives us an easy out—it’s an excuse to be bitter, to say “to hell with it all.”
But guess what?
Some of the greatest minds—people who actually changed the world—would laugh their asses off at Cohle’s self-pitying ramble.
Take Einstein. He saw the beauty in the chaos of the universe, not the despair. “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious,” he said.
It wasn’t about giving up; it was about exploring the wonder in the mess.
Or Tesla—he was so alive with purpose, so certain that the universe had something to offer, that he literally spent his life trying to bring light to the world, trying to show us that there’s more, much more, than what meets the eye.
If you think these guys would look at human consciousness and call it a mistake, you’re out of your mind.
The fact that we can see, feel, and understand this world, and all its beauty and tragedy, is what makes life worth living.
Not because we have all the answers, but because we can question. We can create. And that, my friend, is the real gift.
So, yeah, keep feeding on the nihilistic nonsense if you want. But don’t kid yourself—it’s a cheap trick, just another way to keep you watching, keep you stuck in the darkness.
Because at the end of the day, nihilism sells. People will gobble it up, and the creators will keep cashing in.
But don’t get fooled. You’ve got more in you than the empty promises of a TV show.
The Opposition: Who’s Buying Into Cyclical Time?
Now let’s talk about the other side.
There’s no shortage of philosophers, books, and movies that buy into this cyclical view of time. Books like “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse and “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus play with the idea of time as a cycle.
Films like Groundhog Day toy with the notion of eternal recurrence, using repetition as a tool for self-realization.
And of course, True Detective—where Rustin Cohle’s bleak views mirror this philosophy of cyclical time—reminds us of the seductive comfort of eternal repetition.
These works romanticize the idea of being trapped in an endless loop, but they miss the point.
They get it all wrong. Life isn’t about repeating. It’s about breaking free.
Works Supporting Cyclical Time | Philosophers & Characters |
---|---|
True Detective (TV) | Rustin Cohle |
Siddhartha (book) | Hermann Hesse |
Groundhog Day (film) | Phil Connors |
The Myth of Sisyphus (book) | Albert Camus |
What If Time Isn’t EVEN Real (the real mind twist I left for te end)
You know me. A straight up G.
I would like to end this piece with a concept that shatters the human idea of time to a large extent (whether we see it as a flat circle or a straight line.)
What if time doesn’t even exist in practice?
Think about it.
Time is a concept we cling to like a broken watch—obsessively checking it, watching it tick away, knowing full well that it’s slipping through our fingers.
We base our whole existence around it. We track our hours, our age, our fleeting little lives, all locked into some pathetic cycle.
Tick-tock. Seconds. Minutes. Days. Years. We get older, graying, fragile, all because of this arbitrary measuring stick we’ve made up.
But here’s the thing—what if time isn’t even real?
What if it’s just some illusion we’ve cooked up because we’re too damn obsessed with our own mortality?
We’re born, we die, and in between? Well, we count the minutes, the birthdays, the regrets. We measure everything in what we call a lifetime—like it means something.
But the atoms that make up this body, this consciousness, they don’t care about the clock. They don’t care about your plans or how many candles you blew out on your last birthday.
They’re eternal, unkillable. They don’t get old or forget. They just change. And when you look at it from that angle, maybe we’re not really living on borrowed time. Maybe we’ve always been here, in one form or another, a never-ending shuffle of atoms through infinity.
And then there’s the argument about light.
Time, they say, stops at the speed of light. Well, if time can just stop at the speed of light, then what the hell is time, really?
Is it some kind of illusion we’ve been sold, and light is the trick?
You’re looking at your watch thinking the second hand means something when it’s really just the reflection of light bouncing off your tired eyes.
Time as we know it doesn’t make sense. It’s just man-made. We created it because our lives follow cycles—sunlight, stars, seasons.
But what if it was all a misunderstanding, a human perception that’s led us to believe we’re bound by clocks?
Take a step back, breathe, and realize this: maybe time isn’t real. Maybe it’s just the human mind trying to make sense of an infinite world that doesn’t need to make sense at all.
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