Does Reality Operate on Cyclical Timelines?

Reflections on our view of reality through the analogy of poker.

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I find that playing online poker relaxes me, especially because I am cheap, only risking “points” and not real cash.  I still find my competitive spirit coming up from time to time as I curse out the other avatars representing “players” in my tournament.

I play nine person hold-em tournaments for meaningless points while listening to classical or acoustic music and it amazes me how much it makes me laugh – because it is so much like Life.

It is always surprising me with its unpredictability and forces me to reframe – to see how my perspective on Life can be wrong.

Playing keeps the mind occupied and mostly out of trouble – and generally off social media.

The game requires patience.  The payoffs are only for finishing first, second or third out of nine so going out and falling in love with your hand may well take you out in a blaze of glory.

The game teaches you quickly that your own assessment of both your own skill and your hand, is very possibly illusory.  Many times I have thought I was in the money for a pot only to be surprised when the final card, “the River”, turns over and I lose.

Other times I am sure I am about to be eliminated and the game saves me with a surprise on the river, and I live to play another hand.

It’s a Marathon Not a Sprint

With the tournament format, the game is really about longevity and it turns out that folding your cards often in the early action and just observing the others is generally a good strategy.  Most “flops” – the turn of the first three cards which will determine the outcome along with your two in the hand – yield nothing in terms of definitive or likely wins no matter how good your “hole” cards are.

So folding generally is confirmed as a good play except occasionally when you really WISH that you had gone in, because the flop was spectacular, but you are out.  Like most relationships, most flops don’t work out.

This can lead to a very long and painful lamenting of your fate, or you can let it go.  Sometimes a great flop that you folded also results in another player or two being eliminated on that hand.   So you won even though you didn’t win.

And generally, hanging in for the flop with decent cards shows you how to proceed.  If a decent pair or better turns up, you’re along for the ride.  Alternatively, you just cut your losses.

And so it becomes really mental.  You find that you will fall in love with certain hands – like pocket pairs which are generally quite strong later in the tournament (when you go head to head).  But the same pair of deuces is really not a great hand early with a lot of players in the pot.

Poker Has Its Own Theories and Pundits

Perhaps the greatest similarity of the poker experience to life is in the “explanations.”

If you watch the professionals on television the announcers have really good reasons for why a player won, but ultimately it was because the cards turned for her.   Like our own monkey mind, most of the insights and commentary is after the fact.  The hand is already over.

The only real explanation for “why” a player won is because they had the strongest hand.

It’s a really good time to watch one’s own mind when one plays because the mind has so many reasons for why things happened a certain way – again it’s post mortem.  You can second guess yourself eternally for not seeing this or that possibility.

Or you can tell yourself, “that’s poker” – and wait for the next hand.  That might be the Eckhart Tolle strategy – accept what is and make the most of it.

Professional Poker Provides a Powerful Fantasy

But there are entire books and philosophies of what the best strategies are – and the professional players make a lot of money.  It’s great drama because in that case there is lots of real money involved and again a lot of surprises.

Even on television, professional tournaments have unlikely winners and surprising results quite often.  There are well known players who have won often and consistently but the way the tournaments are structured there are often new players who suddenly break through.

A few years ago there was a sudden influx of young players who had done well online and there was constant speculation by the announcers about they would fare against the older masters, and they came in with a bang and did really well. 

But maybe the most obvious similarity of online poker to Life is that it is about money and power.  Finishing first is still a rush (even playing only for points) for those of us conditioned to become “winners.”

Is Poker a Reflection of a Healthy Society?

It’s all about competition or comparison.  So perhaps the comparison is both telling and unfortunate.

We’ve been conditioned by Darwinism and the patriarchy to simply accept the fact that life is dog eat dog, but what if those nine people, instead of being at the poker table, lived communally together in a place that provided for their well being and went to bed at night watching the stars?

There are many other interpretations of life possible.  For example, we are also conditioned to believe in linear time.  We are born, we live, we die seems to be accepted as what happens by most people.

But poker is a cyclical game.  Each hand is dealt around the elliptical table in the same way and has a beginning and an end.  Then another game begins again.  And then another tournament…

I was curious and I asked the artificial intelligence how many ancient cultures had cyclical notions of time; something that is counterintuitive to many of us but was apparently widely believed by our ancestors.

Our View of Reality Is Not Foolproof

The answer is quite striking because it shows that again, sometimes what we instinctively take for granted about reality and our experience has been viewed from a completely different perspective by those who came before us.

Many of our assumptions have been “proven” by Science and to the extent the results are from empirical evidence and repeated and verified experiments, science has made much of our life easier, especially from a purely physical perspective.

But we all know that science has also been greatly politicized recently and often corrupted by – what else – money and power.

What if science eventually discovers evidence of cyclical time?   Would it help explain the rise of hate movements that were thought to be extinguished?

Throughout history, we have many examples of accepted beliefs being proven false, from the work of Copernicus and Galileo to the advent of Quantum Theory in the last century.

So here is what a completely different view of temporal reality was among some ancient cultures, according to an impersonal and presumably unbiased AI:

My question:  Which civilizations had cyclical conceptions of time?

ChatGPT’s response:

Several civilizations throughout history have had cyclical conceptions of time. Here are a few notable examples:

1. Ancient Indian Civilization: In Hinduism, time is conceptualized as a series of cycles known as "yugas." Each yuga represents a different era or age, characterized by specific qualities and durations. The cycle is said to repeat itself indefinitely, with each yuga following the previous one in a specific order.

2. Ancient Mayan Civilization: The Mayans had a complex cyclical calendar system known as the Long Count. This calendar consisted of several cycles of different lengths, and it was believed that the world went through a series of creations and destructions in a repetitive manner.

3. Ancient Egyptian Civilization: The ancient Egyptians had a cyclical view of time that was closely tied to the annual flooding of the Nile River. The annual flooding marked the beginning of a new agricultural cycle and was seen as a symbol of renewal and rebirth.

4. Ancient Chinese Civilization: Traditional Chinese philosophy, particularly influenced by Taoism, has a cyclical view of time. The concept of Yin and Yang, the interplay of opposing forces, is central to this worldview. The Chinese also had cyclical calendars, such as the 60-year cycle known as the Sexagenary cycle.

5. Mesoamerican Civilizations: Apart from the Mayans, other Mesoamerican civilizations like the Aztecs and the Zapotecs also had cyclical conceptions of time. They believed in the existence of multiple worlds that were destroyed and recreated in a cyclical manner.

These are just a few examples of civilizations with cyclical conceptions of time. There are many other cultures and indigenous societies around the world that have embraced similar beliefs.

(I find this a particularly useful and satisfying way of using ChatGPT – to get factual summaries of important concepts in a succinct and organized way.  But it is based purely on what is known and encoded through our common language and the machine has no cognitive abilities).

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(Tom Bunzel was a contributor to Collective Evolution and now writes for The Pulse.  His new book "Conversations with Nobody: Getting to Know ChatGPT" – a book written with AI, about AI and giving a taste of AI, is available on Amazon.)