Monday, March 29, 2010

Theory of Time Part 1

Time is a trick of the brain. Time bothers me. I don't have to work against it but it still bothers me. Time bothers everyone because they think they don't have enough of it. Time just is. It's people who work against time, not the other way around. Time is money too, apparently. You sell your time for a few quid. No wonder people hoard money and "invest" it. Buy some time. Buy a house, it's your time. You want a physical manifestation of something you cannot comprehend or possess. It figures in a weird way I suppose. We can sell space too. Earthly space to other humans who apparently "own" it. I got news for you greedy people and buyers alike. Earth was here first and it'll be here still after you are gone. Then where is your time and money? What if you bought a second story flat? You have just bought the air. You don't even temporarily own a part of the Earth. Well done. All this is just non-sense to me. Time and Space are intellectual ideas. They are intellectual property. Whoever thought of selling them are geniuses. (Let's just say our thoughts are intellectual property as well, for argument's sake. Imagine selling an idea to someone? Wait... books and music! They are intellectual property! Well, they are the physical manifestations of I.P anyway)

Time exists as one with space in relativity. Both are too inconceivably vast to comprehend. If not for relativity though, time and space, most of our working theories on the universe wouldn't be worth diddly squat. Our brains developed before there ever existed a theory of time or even a practical usage of it. We have struggled for years to think of adequate ways to portray the concept of time in relation to each other. Our early ancestors used sun dials to gauge the time of day we were at and now most everyone carries a timepiece of some sort. Time is a bad habit that needs to be broken. Time plays a pretty big factor in our lives. Time. Why would we pursue something that is detrimental to our peace of mind and sanity? Why bother chasing something that never stops running, never waits around and is never sentimental or understanding to our needs, for your sake or anyone else's? Most would argue that time was here first, before the Earth, before the Sun, before the Solar System. If we look out through some of some of the world's most advanced telescopes, according to the laws of relativity we can see stars that have extinguished many millennia ago. That is hard to comprehend. In theory, we can glimpse into the past, thousands of millions of years ago (or billions if you are American) This is because of a concept known as redshift... traces of light so old it can only be detected by sensitive X-ray equipment. Because light moves at a specific speed, it takes a hell of a long time to reach us as we've been pushed out so far in the universe since Time and Space "started".

Life moves pretty fast and time is against us too apparently. Lets look at that theory according to the laws of physics. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. A human body could not withstand that at all. The human mind though, moves at a shockingly fast speed. It's not possible to gauge something like that with a timepiece, but I could guess any human brain can work out any one single thought in a millisecond, fast enough to "live" in the past as well as the present. I know mine can process a multitude of thought in one night as I have been kept awake, by my own awareness to what I have been thinking. Cannot a human mind, working so fast process relative time? Can we not in theory, be living in a great big individual tube... at one end born and at the other end dead? In the grand scheme of things, there could be a race thousands of millions of years in the vast expanse of the universe ahead of us. To them, we may already be dead. This is an incredible idea for a fast mind that demands answers to try to calculate. We can't. We hide from the idea instead. It's a bit scary.

Certainly, our minds cannot travel 186,000 miles per second (only because apparently our minds are part of our intellect which is part of our brain which is part of our body), but it can, theoretically be gauged by time, a concept we created. So, it could theoretically process many thoughts in an instant. However, we are still a young race, albeit, a human race so we can only see things from a human point of view. Our brains have only developed as much as we will allow them to and are still limited in scope and understanding, hence needing time to gauge progress, space to gauge distance and physical proof to gauge significance and necessity.

The daily slog, the rat-race... the human race. Aren't we all just racing to the finish line in the grand scheme of things also? Why do death and time bother us when they're born into our very nature? We certainly cannot exist without them, that's for sure. All time would have to stop. All death would have to stop. The instant, the moment, would have to drag on forever. Not fun if you just got hit by a train or were just about to die from cancer or an aneurysm.

Time is a killer. But generally it is unimportant. It is a future, a destiny we cannot comprehend by any length. The past is used by people who want to slow down their minds, to catalogue events from the past, like the birth of a great man, the day they got married, the day they went on holiday, the day a relative died an so on. Time is good for the thinker and the believer but it yields little proof except from a relative point of view... the relation of others in our company. How many times have I had to drag a friend or girlfriend out of their projecting minds of a "better time" they might be having in the past or future, just so they can enjoy right now? How many times have you tried to recollect a memory and failed, only to have it finished by someone else who bore witness to the event? We want clarity that the memory did happen and to find comfort in it. So why is it inconceivably strange that we can glimpse the past through a telescope? Maybe it's not the past but the present? Why anyway, would one end of the universe be in the past, us in the present and another part in a possible future? Why can't we see these "future galaxies"? How can you see what has not yet been formed from our primitive perspectives. We are not willing to accept our own fate or our past, so why should we be able to see the future? Perhaps our minds need to work at a faster and more accepting capacity in order to conceive of this strange reality, that may be the future. We spend too much time clinging to the past and not enough time focusing on the present. There is no way we can own the future. There are too many people holding onto old ways, old ideas and stubbornly holding the willing back. We will become silhouettes eventually and those who refuse to believe it shall have a hard time dying and letting go. Perhaps religion is for the weak minded, the slower minded, the hangers on. For those who can only handle but to process singular thoughts and ideas and believe we are better off that way. But here's a thought: If we did exist in a "tube", created at one end and dead at the other, are we not in closer union with whatever created us? No amount of hanging on is going to make you more worthy of understanding creation. You die, just like everyone else and you forget everything you've learned anyway.

This has been the Theory of Time Part One. It's rather messy and edited to fuck from the first draft. I'm not sure there'll ever be a part two, so lets see how that goes.

One day at a time.

EDIT: This was very hard to write and may seem shaky at some points. If you feel an elaboration is necessary at any particular observation, please feel free to mail me and I'll see what I can do - Matt

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