I'm siding with Bo on this issue, and Asherman. 'Time' as defined by checking your watch and planning events is a human convention, and just one more example of how we wish to be slaves to ourselves, for some yet-to-be-explored reason (I would blame society, but humans invented that too). As an explanation for the mysteries of the universe, and the 'continuity' of nature (for lack of a better term), let's just say those monkeys with the typewriters still haven't written the complete works of Shakespeare.
Terry wrote that
"The experience of time is subjective, but the fact is that one moment can be distinguished from another by the change in position of the hands on a clock, the ebb and flow of tides, the erosion of mountains, the birth and growth of children, gray hair and wrinkles, and the accumulation of a lifetime of memories, at least until death or Alzheimer's erases them."
How can one argue against that? Nevertheless, I feel that it is not the "final" picture. Even objective change is a mystery if one entertains the existence of some kind of timeless eternity at the core of reality. But as we experience life, becoming, motion, change, growth, finity, mortality, etc. Terry's conclusions are valid. It would be meaningless (dualistically speaking) to repudiate them.
Time is not change; change is change.
For me, concepts like time and space, not to mention infinity and eternity, are in our heads rather than in the world. We use them to think with. I agree with Kant that time and space or hard-wired a priori, like some kind of grammar, without which we do not function well. That does not mean that time, space and grammar exist as phenomena independent of human activitiy. And it doesn't really matter, so long as we have them and they work for our purposes. Contemporary physics is beginning to find the concepts of time and space somewhat problematical, if not obstructive, as I recall the input of Fresco.
I am hearing you all that think that change is different than time. However, state a (say my full coffee cup) still came before state b (my empty coffee cup). I dont see any change that took place over any duration where the later state of affairs obtains before the earlier state for any other viewer.
Even extreme circumstances of human A traveling at the speed of light while I am pour my coffee for 2 minutes and then flying back for 2 minutes will seem like four minutes to me but will seem instantanious for him - yet he left when I poured my coffee and returned when I began drinking it.
Even though there is no specified observation point which should be the measurement of all time - change still takes place.
I could see the argument for a lack of time if anything could travel faster than the speed of light - but nothing can - thus time and change move irrevocably forward.
TTF
Also, I have never been a big fan of Augustine's aregument for a durationless present. I know the present is short - but I do not see how it can be durationless.
TF
thethinkfactory wrote:Also, I have never been a big fan of Augustine's aregument for a durationless present. I know the present is short - but I do not see how it can be durationless.
TF
Agree! We don't even have a present. All we have is a past and a future.
OR, John, we don't have past (except as memory) or a future (except as anticipation or potential); all we may have is a changing present.
But the CONCEPTS of past, present, and future cannot occur except together, and in terms of each other.
we exist in the 'node' of being; the 'now' in which the past is being recorded (and in some cases reviewed in endless iterations) and the future is being 'created' (but is always 'just' beyond our reach!).
[if 'nothingness' is the 'frame of reference' for 'consciousness', time is the 'scale' of 'relationships'.]
Time, or just continuance?
I'll need time for that too.
The theoretical foundations of time are interesting, and may even be somewhat useful. More important is how you use and relate to it. Though the Perceptual World may be illusory, we have to treat it as if it had objective reality. We can not repeal the Law of Gravity, nor for all practical purposes freeze time, or move at will backward and forward in it. We have only this moment, in this particular river of consequences.
We can waste time by becoming fixated on the past, or we can waste it by endless dreaming and planning that never results in implementation. We might use the moment to enjoy it without respect to either past, or future. We might learn something and grow in wisdom. Every moment has its consequences. We can add to the suffering of the world, or we can make some effort to expand charity and compassion. What we have is this moment. What will you do with it?
You do not have a choice for you are a fiction and fictions don't choose anything.
Can we say, Tywvel, that we are fictions written by noone? And can see say that we are self-writing fictions (fictions written by ficticious writers)? Sorry for taking your metaphor so literally, but if the above is correct (as well as fun), what fiction--to paraphrase Ash- would you choose to write? Remember the existentialists insist that we are always writing our own stories, i.e., creating our essences.
One way I see my life is as a dream of choices. I think we all derive our sense or illusion of freedom (i.e., free will) from this dream.
IS the story. Now has no opposite; there is no not-now. That which you are right now has never slept, you/I are brand spanking new,
and unborn.
Twyvel, you say:
"Imagine that you are writing your own story (that there is a you that has its own life, and is in control of it) is probable the greatest hindrance to the realization that you are not."
In actual life a similar hindrance is the meditative effort to cast ego away; that's an act of ego that reinforces the illusion of its reality...just as "writing the story IS the story." What a wonderful phrase.
It's a bit of a catch 22....
Yes, it is paradoxical for ego to try to eliminate ego.
