Gender Jumper

I've found myself revisiting one of my earliest quirky, reflexive metaphors several times of late, and flamingsword asked me to explain it. I think I have, at times, called it "The Lifesaver Metaphor", which is more poetic but technically incorrect twice over.

TWO LIFEGUARDS

Two Lifeguards found each other early in life. They had both helped so many people in their brief lives that they saw in one another a shared drive to help others and quickly build a loving relationship out of it. While it wasn't perfect, it often felt too good to be true. "How can another person see me so well?" they each thought.

In celebration of their love, they went on a cruise, but late the first night they both felt overboard. No one on the ship knew they were gone, and since they were the ones who checked on everyone else, who knew how long it would take for someone to notice?

They looked at each other. There was nothing else to see.

Surely my lover will save me, each thought.

They looked at each other. There was nothing else to see.

Almost at the same moment, they spoke:
"We must swim to shore," said one lifeguard. "There are islands all around us, surely we can find land and get help."
"We must stay where we are," said the other lifeguard. "Someone will notice eventually and they will come find us."

They looked at each other. There was nothing else to see.

Surely my lover will save me, each thought.

They looked at each other. There was nothing else to see.

Did they fight? Did they repeat themselves? Did they hurt one another trying to prove something to themselves? Almost certainly.

They looked at each other. There was nothing else to see.

Their thoughts remained in sync: Surely my lover will save me... My lover will save me... My lover can save me...

They looked at each other. There was nothing else to see.

My lover can't save me...

Their parting barely qualified as a goodbye or a break-up, for by this time each was entirely focused on self-preservation.

They didn't look at each other. There was nothing else to say.

One lifeguard swam away. The other lifeguard stayed in place.

And with a little effort, both plans worked: each lifeguard was rescued exactly as hoped. Once they knew the other person was safe, they did not reconnect.

Their lives diverged rapidly.
The lifeguard who swam away continued to find power in action. The lifeguard who stayed continued to find power in staying still. They each helped so many people yet protected themselves a little more than before.

With each passing year, the other lifeguard and the falling overboard and the rescue would take up a smaller space in their memories.

They stopped looking for one another. There was nothing else to see.

( On Journaling... ) The vast majority of the social sciences as we know them are so steeped in "Western" hegemony that studies will be impossible to replicate under other economic, cultural, and technological circumstances. Seeing the present moment, vis à vis pandemic(s), war(s), and corruptions(sss), as roughly an apex or precipice culminated on everything that came before (and with very little room to go anywhere but down), we have a unique birds eye view if we take the time to appreciate it. We have way more information about humans than has ever before been accessible, and we are at the peak of human understanding before it either crashes back down or is handed over to computers to process on our behalf (or hell, maybe both). Why not try to use this purview to leave something behind that is beyond ourselves?

( Something that might help the next great society avoid some of our hubris and failings... )... but there's no academic hub I can find that pulls it altogether and says, "This is how human relationships and cultures reflect their material relationship with time." I don't think it could help being metaphysical (even spiritual), but then the emergence of sciences are rarely the cold, calculating laboratories we bias today.

Anyway, if you know any good books on sociotemporality (whatever its authors call it), let me know?