Time is an illusion. Time is as elusive as the sound of one hand clapping. Time is humanity’s concrete attempt to quantify an abstraction: its own – *our* own – conceptual child – its…its…inaccurate conception! In other words, time is bunk. What presents itself as one of the universe’s most thorough enigmas is but a simple but wildly common consequence of dual definition. If time the measurement of change and time this travellable dimension that exists in its own right and is some miraculous omni-eternal realm that preceeds and survives all else. But then – aren’t those who believe already calling this – calling Him – by another name? No no – time is no mystery until we try to make this one word define two or more brilliantly contrasting, if not completely separate things. And yet…
And yet it is indispensibly useful in man being man. Wait a sec! It’s useful but it doesn’t exist? That’s insane! Ah…aw…oh wait! Dual definitions? We are sentient beings with a brain and a mind…but what is mind? Never..uh..mind, that’s for another article. I will borrow just a sliver from the mind/brain question by positing that it can be very easy to confound definitions without being aware of it. And let’s face it – sometimes the distinction is pretty damned fuzzy!
“Make up your mind!”
“I’m thinking, hold on!”
“Well think faster, I’m hungry!”
“You’re giving me a headache. How can I think when my head hurts?”
“Geez, Louis! Your head would hurt less if you gave it some food.”
“That’s dumb. You won’t cure a headache with brainfood.”
“See…my mind is playing tricks on me cuz my brain is STARVING!”
“I’m *looking*! Do you mind?!”
“Look, take a sip of your water and try to ignore the pain. It’s mind over matter.”
“…?…”
“What’s the matter?”
“I have to pee.”
“You’re driving me out of my mind!”
In our colloquial communication, we tend to use slightly different terms interchangably. That’s fine, except when we’re called upon to break that habit to explore the subtleties. Analogically – brain is to mind as time is to…er…time. And *that* is the conundrum. We haven’t yet parced out the subtleties of time the concept and time the tool. Time the tool can very well stay the casually bandied about, concrete “thing” to which we pay homage with our wristwatches, alarm clocks, and even New Year’s Eve fireworks. Time the tool is our way of staying coordinated. In sync. It’s how we get things done.
It’s when we personify it and give it, even hypothetically, physical form by ascribing it a presence via the other 3 dimensions, that our carelessness can lead to outright mistakes. No, we don’t actually say it’s a thing we can touch or manipulate. That would be lunacy. Oh…Einstein…relativity…bending of space/time continua…time…travel?
THAT is the fallacy. I don’t know nearly enough physics to argue against anything Mr. Albert Einstein devoted his life, and his extraordinarily strong intellect to investigating scientifically. And so, I’m leaving that well enough alone. I’m at least smart enough to trust that any conclusions of mine that differ from his, are a matter of semantics and indeed, dual definitions. Mine is strictly a philosophical and/or logical argument. It’s a theory. Call it my Theory of Relative Confusion. I’m confused by the contradiction of matter being neither created nor destroyed, and the hypothesis that there exists infinite other older versions of NOW! That I can allegedly one day step into a contraption and go back 10 years to say hello to myself, is to me utterly prepostrous!
The older me *is* me! The cells that were me then have done their whole ashes to ashes thing and maybe now are part of a collection of dust in some dark, disgusting corner of my bedroom or garage that I haven’t touched in said 10 years. The cells that stayed with me stayed with me and are with me. The now me. They cannot be in the old me cause the old me is me 10 years ago. And it and I have changed. Over time.
Time is the measure of change. Change stops – life stops – time stops. I exist. I’m living. I’m changing, thus I am alive. And so time exists. Uh – oh, the “if y then x, so, if x then y” fallacy. I almost committed the error of ‘converting the conditional’! Let’s try this again.
Wait…I don’t have to try it again. It’s the dual definition condition. We are using the word time to describe two (two at least!) differnt phenomena and two different functions. Time the measure of change, time the tool, time the great synchronizer – that exists.
Time the magical, manipulable, physical, travellable fourth dimension does not. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? Of course it does. It sends the waves, which are vibrating at a certain number per second and moving at sound’s speed of say 770mph, and varies according to the temperature and density of the medium through which is it traveling. Yes – it makes that sound.
But, unless I am within earshot of said sound when it is made, I will not hear it. And I will not get there in time. The sound existed. Now it does not. It happened on, say, Monday, January 14 at 4:29 and 38 seconds P.M., and now it’s gone.
Both that sound and that time are gone, and gone forever. They lived, and now they have passed. Ashes to ashes and dust to dusk! They do not exist. They did, now they don’t. It’s a new time…a new moment. A changed moment.
And now it’s gone. Here. Not here. So, time exists. And it doesn’t.
