TIME AND SPACE: NON-LINEARITY

A debut author challenges ingrained notions of time and space in this nonfiction work.

Asking someone what time and space are, Kudevics notes, “is the same as asking what water is for fish.” He advocates for nonlinear thinking regarding these ideas, positing that this approach has moral implications; whereas “linearity is based on differences,” nonlinear consciousness, per the author, has the potential to create a “spherical oneness, a source of love and basic humanity.” Challenging readers to reexamine their assumptions about these concepts, the author offers an analogy of an unfolded map of the world. The map is clearly labeled with geographic locations and is drawn to scale, so that users can measure distance. When the same paper map is balled up and the details are no longer visible to the user, its features still exist but are “locked inside the ball.” Drawing on a range of thought experiments that are often not resolved with clear-cut answers (“Do we have any other kind of consciousness?”), Kudevics blends metaphysical ruminations on the nature of reality with his own experiences with unexplained paranormal circumstances. While on a bicycle ride, for instance, the author once turned a corner along a well-known route only to find himself lost in a new place that was miles away from where he should have been. Other examples are drawn from his more than four decades spent as a deep-sea captain contemplating the minuteness of his existence as he navigated the ocean’s vast surface with an unfathomably expansive realm stretching beneath him. Kudevics’ prose style is, by his own admission “disjointed,” rife with grammatically defiant “incomplete” thoughts and run-on sentences. While this is a deliberate effort to challenge linearity and convention in the writing process itself, and reflects the author’s philosophical rejection of the status quo, it makes for a disorienting read that distracts from (rather than amplifies) the book’s case for nonlinear thinking.

A mind-bending challenge to common assumptions about reality hampered by disorienting prose.