In his brilliant essay Tom Griffiths is positive about the relevance of 'deep time' for Australian History. But it seems to me that deep time has a darker side.
Deep time makes it impossible to imagine historical beginning and ending.
Jean Baudrillard on the other hand knows that it MUST go on ad infinitum. There is no such thing as progress, since there is no end towards which to progress. Non-progressive conceptions of time are profoundly at odds with modern Western thought. They signify the end of 'politics' as it has frequently been understood since the Enlightenment - ie not politics in the Aristotelian sense, but as struggle to create an enduringly better world, or resist a worse one. Played out against the abyss of deep time, politics becomes once more no more than the clash of interests and loyalties and moralities.