Intercultural communication Prof. Dr. Jürgen Beneke

1. TIME 1 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke TIME and Culture: some aspects principles Time and the way we conceptualise it - time flows, passes, flies, seems to be standing still - time can be saved, wasted, used, lost, even killed - time as a commodity- time as a tangible object Modern or present-time concepts of time emphasise the thingness of time: it is tangible and it is a commodity

2. TIME 1 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke • Chiliasm • a chiliad = Greek one thousand • the advent of the millennium • the returning of Christ, according to the Revelation of St. John the Divine 20, 4 ff.) • Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years. • the Last Judgement and the establishment of the millennium: God reigns on earth and time comes to an end.

3. TIME 2 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke • Chiliastic time concept • time has a beginning and an end • time is pointed towards the final aim, the salvation of man • time is conceived of as an axis • history is the story of man’s salvation • the end of history is the end of death and by implication the end of time

4. TIME 2 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke • TIME is either pointed time (Western time, axis) or cyclical time • Hindu time is cyclicalHinduism: karma and re-incarnation • the wheel of time; time repeats itself, there is no end Graeco-Roman time: cyclical • time is both the same again and new, repetition and unrepeatable, new and old, frozen and flowing (nunc stans: the eternal moment)

5. TIME 2 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke • Western time concept: the moment of time will never repeat itself, it is lost forever in the abysm and cannot be brought back • the “destruction” of time through ritual (in illo tempore , Mirca Eliade) • mysticism: timelessness in meditation • time in chiliastic thought: the pilgrim on his path to salvation through this “valley of tears” • according to this time concept the future is the only thing that counts • there is no presence (the presence is the infinitesimally short passage from past to future) • The West actually and in the last analysis has no present time!Immanent restlessness in the Westthe eternal traveller and the journey of life (see American road movies)

6. TIME 3 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke Judeo-Christian time concept  |   Nothing /CHAOS time-bound existence end of timeunder the “dictatorshipof time” the present: infinitesimally short passage from past to future

7. TIME 3 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke • Haste and speed are obligatory (don’t waste the time God has given you) • Eschatalogy: belief in the end of the world or the last things, the Second Coming (of Christ) and the Last Judgement, resurrection and The New Age • Eschatological time concept lingers on in the ideological derivatives of the Judeo-Christian tradition, especially in the various varieties of socialism. • even the - secular - idea of progress can be derived from this time concept. Is Progress progressing towards a well-defines aim? • No precise meaning, but something/somewhere in the future

8. TIME 3 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke • In sports: faster, higher, farther; in technology: more efficient, time-saving! • The 286 processor is superseded by the 386, then the 486, Pentium I, II and III at 800 or 1000 Hertz, today (2001) a hard disk of 12 Gigabyte memory is the absolute minimum and a CPU has more than 1 Giga-Hertz.

9. TIME 4 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke • The end of history • According to Karl Marx, history is a succession of class struggles;with the transition from socialism to communism, history will come to an end, because there will be no more class struggles (“everybody according to their needs”). • The end of history will be identical with the permanent establishment of universal peace. The enmity between the rich and the poor will have been overcome just as the enmity between creatures.

10. TIME 4 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke • According to Isaiah, even the lions will become vegetarians! • And there will be no death, because death came into this world as the punishment for Adam and Eve’s disobedience (original sin).ISAIAH Chapter 11: • 1. AND there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: • 2. AND the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him (...) • 6. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. • 7. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

11. TIME 5 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke Judeo-Christian concepts of time and the idea of history coming to an end in ideologies derived from Christianity „Völker, hört die Signale/ Auf zum letzten Gefecht Die Internationale erkämpft das Menschenrecht“ Das Sturmlied der SA (Horst Wessel-Lied): „Es zittern die morschen Knochen der Welt vor dem letzten Kampf“. The „Third Reich“ was called „das 1000jährige Reich“, an allusion to chiliastic ideas

12. TIME 5 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke Jewish time concepts "Eine der Zukunft zugewendete, ursprüngliche Zeitdynamik nicht aus rationaler Planung, sondern aus seelischer, religiös begründeter Spannung ist das Wesentliche und Fruchtbare beim Zeitbewußtsein des Judentums. Dieser Funke ist auf das Christentum übergesprungen als der vielleicht bedeutendste Beitrag des Judentums für die Kultur der modernen abendländischen Welt." (Wendorff 1985: 34)

13. TIME 6 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke • Segmented time: time as told by the calendar, years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds • Event time: “when our ancestors arrived at these shores” “when the rice is planted” etc. • Psychological Time

14. TIME 6 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke • Rosalind: Time travels in diverse paces with divers persons. I’ll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops and who he stands still withal. • Orlando: Who does he gallop withal? • Rosalind: With a thief to the gallows, for though he go as softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there. • Orlando: Who stays it still withal? • Rosalind: With lawyers iin the vacation; for they sleep between term and term and then they perceive not how time moves. (Shakespeare, As You Like It, III,2, 325ff)

15. TIME 6 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke • Cyclical time: the return of what was before and the concept of the wheel of time

16. TIME 7 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke TIME is greedy and malicious, devouring and ungrateful: Odysseus in Troilus and Cressida to Achilles, who wants to rest on his laurels: Time has, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitude: Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour´d As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done: perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail In monumental mockery. (...)

17. TIME 7 Intercultural communicationProf. Dr. Jürgen Beneke For time is like the fashionable host That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles, And farewell goes out sighing. O let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was: For beauty, wit, High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time. (III,3, 145ff)