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Creating a common language base for relationships
Deep Time
We experience deep time as a felt sense of the vast evolutionary span across which human bodies, nervous systems, relationships, and ways of being were shaped — far longer than recorded history, culture, or modern civilization.
Deep time reminds us that who we are did not emerge recently. Our instincts, emotions, attachment patterns, and relational capacities were shaped across deep evolutionary time — first through mammalian and hominin lineages, and later refined in close contact with land, kin, and community.
In The Experience of We, deep time isn’t a backdrop — it’s the context within which human life makes sense.
Why deep time matters for understanding ourselves
Most of what governs human experience didn’t evolve for modern conditions.
Our nervous systems were shaped in environments characterized by:
Small, interdependent groups
Frequent face-to-face interaction
Shared responsibility for survival
Rhythms governed by seasons, light, and scarcity
Direct feedback between action and consequence
Deep time helps explain why many modern environments feel disorienting, overwhelming, or isolating — even when our material needs are met.
Deep time and relational design
The ways humans regulate, bond, and make meaning aren’t arbitrary.
They evolved through long-term participation in relational systems where:
Safety was collective, not individual
Identity was embedded in relationship
Conflict was metabolized through proximity and repair
Belonging was necessary for survival
From a deep time perspective, relationship isn’t a preference. It’s a biological and evolutionary requirement.
Deep time dissolves blame
When we look through deep time, many modern struggles become intelligible rather than shameful.
Anxiety, burnout, polarization, loneliness, and reactivity aren’t signs of weakness or failure. They’re often signals that our ancient bodies are operating in conditions they were never designed for.
Deep Time shifts the question from “What’s wrong with us?” to “What were we shaped for — and what are we living inside now?”
Deep Time and patience
Deep Time also teaches humility.
It reminds us that:
Human systems change slowly
Relational capacities develop through repetition and continuity
Repair takes time
New patterns require sustained conditions, not quick fixes
From this perspective, healing and transformation aren’t hacks — they’re processes.
Why deep time matters in The Experience of We
We center deep time because:
It grounds our work in biological reality
It restores dignity to our human limitations
It explains why relational coherence is costly but necessary
It anchors hope in long-term processes rather than short-term solutions
The Experience of We isn’t about transcending our humanity. It’s about designing ways of living that are compatible with the beings we actually are.
Our one-sentence synthesis
We experience Deep Time as the evolutionary context that shaped human bodies, nervous systems, and relationships — reminding us that meaningful change must honor the vast timescales and conditions that made us human.
