As well as seeing time simply as an idea and a perception, how the ideas of the past, present and future impact how we perceive and behave is explored here.
My aim has always been to question our perception of truth, as it is our understanding that defines how we react to it. But let us lay down the intent of this article first. The aim is not to offer an alternate scientific theory of time or a modern philosophical discussion of it. But because they themselves are unique insights that can help us build a different appreciation of time, we will draw on applicable scientific theories and philosophies. A more useful and realistic understanding of time could ideally emerge.
The Time Idea
The obvious human need for objects and concepts to be called and described is universal. Doing so enables us to respond properly to what we have mentioned. This makes the unknown identified. And having a working knowledge of what we have called and described helps us to navigate our environment effectively to support our survival.
Since the dawn of human civilization, it has been that way. As social animals, all human beings see and encounter must have a name to be able to recognize them and effectively interact with others about them. Thus, a shared interpretation of a notion or a concept is achieved.
I think the same is true of our definition of time. To respond appropriately to it, we called it and described it. And having done so, to promote contact, we now have a common understanding of this basic definition. The notion of time developed into a convention around which the everyday human tasks required for survival could be planned.
But what is the precise time? Since human beings started to exist, has our perception of time changed? I believe it did.
We became accustomed to the notion of time for everyone because we were born in a world that already has a previously accepted conception of it. Around this widely held and generally established notion, our consciousness evolved. But is our interpretation of this precise?
Imagine being born into a world in which everyone assumes the planet was flat. And there isn't any way to prove otherwise. Then, on this common notion, all our ideas and actions will be based. In the knowledge that the planet was flat, we will live and die. And maybe it would not really have mattered whether or not we knew the facts.
Having taken this into account, is it then conceivable that time only exists because we assume it does? We have called it, weighed it, and it revolves around our everyday routine. But what if our time comprehension is not accurate? What if we were to describe it the wrong way?
We may have initially approached this particular idea based on an incorrect premise, much like the philosophers of ancient times. When people who lived during ancient times assumed that the world was flat, the result was that their ships could only be navigated in a restricted way. Is it possible then that our experience of time has actually also restricted us in some way?
How is time perceived?
Initially, we must accept that our perception of time is constrained by our capacity to interpret it.
For truth in general, this statement is also valid. Our behavior is focused on our conceptions of how life works. But sadly, these values are based on our limited knowledge and comprehension of the world around us. Given the limitations of the human mind and the senses we possess, we will try to address the definition of time for practical purposes.
It changes all about us. And because of the consistency of our consciousness, we sense these changes. Due to a continuous flow of shifting stimuli, we can sense time. But when there is continuous stimulation, doesn't it seem like time has stopped? Once again, our goal is not to create an objective perception of time. But instead, we try to explore our sense of time. And I believe that the key could be kept by how our minds perceive what we experience. Perhaps it was Aristotle who first forwarded the connection between change and time. But what if, since time does not exist, there is no connection? It was Ernst Mach who suggested that time is an abstraction that resulted merely from changes observed. I suggest an alternate concept based on the aforementioned one. Time is a perceived transition.
Our memory and focus are made possible through knowledge of time. This obvious movement of time can be experienced by the mind operating in a wakeful state because we constantly feel the changes happening around us and to us.
Besides, consider cases of persons with amnesia, or those suffering from the inability to construct long-term memories, or those with dissociative identity disorder. In all these instances, because of a discontinuity of memory, a person's awareness of reality is disturbed.
We can perceive the entirety of an experience because, by linking all stimuli together and interpreting them, our consciousness produces a complete image. Take the case of our music definition. Music is nothing more than a series of auditory stimuli that differ and vary. Yet it is only our consciousness that brings together these stimuli so that we can describe the pattern of a song.
Humans and Time
Can time be interpreted by animals? As if they can, they appear. But animals can't view it the way we do without the logical thought mechanisms that human beings experience.
Consider how a dog responds to a vehicle that is moving. As its senses receive the signals that it is shifting its location, a dog can perceive the car's motion. It seems to anticipate where the vehicle is going as the dog chases the car. But perhaps it does this because of its senses' peculiar anatomy as well as its brain's innate programming to detect motion. But does the dog grasp the history of the car or will it be able to contemplate the future of the car?
Only current drives are powered by a dog. There will be no preparation. And they can't regret it.
Why is it that this notion of time can be created by human beings, but other creatures can not? Perception of time serves what purpose?
Is it possible to see the connection between cause and effect of our acts for us to learn what is beneficial and what is harmful? But, by conditioning, animals are also able to learn cause and effect.
The need to identify time emerged from the need for man to synchronize his behavior with other people's actions to be able to communicate and transact without chaos. People who are alive today have grown used to how we see the passing of time and calculate it. Since the invention of the sundial, the practicality of developing a universal method of measuring time has evolved. This concept of time revolves around all human activities now.
A Time Chronicle
Due to our memory, we are aware of the events that happened before. But what about the events that took place before our very existence? We may not possibly have any memory of things that happened before the birth of our own consciousness.
Here's where our concept of history comes in. And yet history is nothing more than a record, written by those who came before us, of past events.
So, is history a true reflection of what we call the past now? And if there is no record of events that have passed, does that mean that the past ceases to exist? I can not help but be reminded of the philosophy of Immaterialism which asserts that objects only exist if we conceive of them in our minds.
But again, this notion of history and the past are just offshoots of a widely held conception of time. The past, I say, is not about time, but rather about transformation. The past is memorized by the transition. Therefore, history could be seen as a chronicle of developments that took place before our knowledge of them.
In the Future
What's the future here? We have an idea and we hope that tomorrow, next month, or even next year, we will still be alive. We build mental expectations of what we are going to do and what is going to happen later. And these standards are becoming a loop repeating itself.
However, as the future has not yet come to pass, all we have is an idea of it. It is not possible to assume that the future exists precisely because it is a concept. I reaffirm the point that time is not about time at all. It's a question of transition. And if time is considered to change, then I suggest that the future is anticipated to change.
Prophets, oracles, and seers have appeared since the dawn of history, believing that they can predict the future. The fascination with what the future holds persists even today. Companies want to forecast profits. Politicians want to do well in the polls ahead. And students hope that the profession that is right for them will be selected.
But I do believe that it is not just about the future per se to want to know the future. It's a matter of power.
The need of man for power is about the certainty of his continuing survival. And understanding what the future holds and how to protect it are perhaps the greatest and most difficult priorities of man.
The Time Flow
The popular notion of time would seem to be that of the interconnection of events that occur in sequence. And we begin to experience an obvious flow of time after these events have occurred. This is made clear when a subsequent event is influenced by one previous event. It comes into play with the concept of action and reaction. And what we are starting to perceive as the passage of time is this interconnection of events.
But is time causing these occurrences? Or do these events occur time-independently? I suggest that events happen without the presence of time, since our definition of time can not be correct, as we have tried to show. When they happen, we just interpret the events.
If time is merely an idea created by our interpretation of events happening around us, therefore, because it is merely an idea, it will not influence or trigger these events. It's just a perception we have called and described, maybe even mistakenly.
How this notion of time tends to affect us
Since we accept that time exists as clocks and calendars have described it for us, we can imagine the past as well as the future. The months or the years that have passed can be seen in a calendar and we assume that this is the past. We look at our watches and see that five hours from now, a certain appointment we have will take place, and then we trust that this appointment will take place in the future. In the end, these devices allow us to build a mental image of time. But clocks and calendars, again, are mere inventions that function as a means of planning our routines. Such settled on measures of minutes, hours, days, and months are needed by the hectic pace of modern life.
Let us recall the statement that because of our ability to remember what has happened and our ability to predict what will happen, the concept of time is made possible. And it is the consistency of our consciousness that enables what we remember, what we perceive is actually occurring, and what we think can happen later, to be connected. Based on this, we can clearly see that our ability to interpret the continuity of events makes the meaning of time possible. Therefore, time can be seen as an intangible abstraction that helps us to make sense of events occurring around us.
Yet, how does it appear that time affects us? In the successive examples, my use of the word 'seem' would become evident.
Emotion is one undeniable element of human life. Let's take sorrow into account. We may assume that, because of loss, a person feels sorrow. But this failure as it occurs becomes an occurrence that has already happened. And because we recall the sad incident, it seems that the sorrow remains.
Remember fear now. Owing to perceived present danger, apprehension exists. Fear is helpful because it allows us to live to prevent imminent damage. It is linked to anxiety and fear, but not the same. Anxiety is described as worrying about an expected damaging event that may or may not occur.
Sadness and anxiety seem to be consequences of our time perception. Sadness, while anxiety is the distressing expectation of a potential future occurrence, may be said to be a result of a past event. Therefore, because of our collective notion of the past and future, it can be argued that depression and anxiety exist.
But imagine a scenario in which a person may choose not to dwell on a past loss and therefore not to worry about the possibility of a harmful occurrence in the future. If that person were only to concentrate on what is actually happening, then would it be possible that he would no longer succumb to anxiety or sadness?
Let us ponder remorse. This is a state of mind that can cause a person to become unstable if left unchecked. A product of remorse is guilt. And remorse is the act of blaming a past fault on yourself. But I think that if a person could let go of the importance of such unfortunate memories, then he would no longer be affected by such remorse.
I would like to argue that this perception of the past and future stems from many of the distressing interactions people face. People become captives of their history often. People may become too scared of the future as well. Judgment and decision-making are negatively affected in both cases, which can lead individuals to make more problematic decisions.
The World and Time of Modern
Modern civilization's rapid speed has given more and more importance to the significance of this notion of time. Schedules, meetings, deadlines, and so on produce this impression that there is so little time to do it all. This is why the notion of time management came in.
About this notion of time, business, trade, and industry revolve. Transactions are all dependent on how, using agreed norms, we have described and calculated time.
But imagine an age which had a way of life that was more primitive. Remember the time when electricity was not available and the occupations of people were much simpler and less diverse. May we say there was a slower speed of life then?
Is it fair to say that life during those times could have been less stressful? And as our new definition of time already made life more stressful? Based on this, I would like to assert that many of the issues facing individuals today are results of how we experience time.
Time is an illusion?
Philosophers and even scientists have proposed that the illusion of time may very well be.
To say that time exists is to say that there is a difference between the past, the present, and the future. But when there's a future, isn't it just a new present? And isn't the past merely a recollection of a previous present?
We can experience the movement of time because of the consistency of our consciousness, as we have so far described. But the consciousness of even one can shift. And our interpretation of time can also differ depending on our state of wakefulness or alertness,.
Is it then probable that two people would interpret time differently? Owing to the fluctuating states of consciousness that people have, the answer is yes.
If we embrace this new theory that time is perceived to change, then it is how we interpret these changes based on our wakefulness or consciousness state that differs.
The Time Travel Fantasy
The probability of time travel has been dedicated to a vast number of books and movies. Some fantasy authors represent time somewhat as a physical path where you can navigate back and forth. Theoretical physicists claim that a human can transcend time and visit the past or the future, provided the correct technology.
The definition of being able to travel through time, however, implies that it functions like space. Using coordinates, distances, and such, the physical location of objects can be calculated. As we have calculated distances compared to other fixed points, we can fly to a particular spot.
Another erroneous philosophical concept could end up being the belief that time works like space. The meaning of time may not be the way we perceive distances and positions in space at all.
At this point, learned readers can become suspicious and maybe remember how Einstein theoretically has interwoven time and space together. He did this by asserting that time slows down for that object compared to other objects when an object reaches the speed of light. He assumed, thus, that a so-called space-time continuum exists.
But it must be remembered that our debate is not about the laws of time and space, but about our understanding of time itself. As a means of prediction and regulation, all theories and equations that have been created to describe the behavior of our reality are intended to be used. They don't deal with thought purely.
The beauty of science is its never-ending quest to use an empirical approach to lay down an objective view of truth. But there is also another concept of science that applies, and that is self-correction. Theories came and went. Old ones are substituted for new ones. And this is because, based on certain assumptions, hypotheses are themselves made. But if we are to understand science's history, hypotheses have also been found to be incorrect. And even Einstein went wrong when he came face to face with the mechanics of quantum.
Let us question this long-accepted notion of time in this way, then. What if we do not travel through time, but time moves through us instead? Once again, this is based on the premise that time is viewed as a mere transition. And if this is the case, then maybe time does not exist as we know it. Change just does. And as we view it, we are merely calculating the speed of transition. Actually, we're not calculating time.
If we borrow the idea of Einstein that time slows down for an object as it travels faster, then should we not look at this phenomenon in this way, that what differs is the pace in which we perceive changes in the object's position? If we can show that all we experience is the pace at which change happens, we would be able to do away with the idea of time entirely.
Dealing as a mere idea with Time
If we are to accept the claim that perhaps time is merely an abstract term that reflects our understanding of a changing reality, then what are the consequences?
We may choose to let go of the past and not be affected by our failures and everything we have missed by doing away with this erroneous definition of time. We may choose not to be nervous about the future either. Man's fascination with power also causes him to think and plan for an imaginary future that might never even occur. We emphasize only the present instead.
In his Gestalt Therapy, this would sound close to what Perls was trying to propose. But the distinction is that the theory of Perls is not based on the assumption that time is an illusion. He knows that time exists and he adheres to the ideas of the past and the future. I recommend that we focus only on the present since it would appear that the present is all that exists based on the aforementioned logic.
Even mindfulness is an approach based on concentrating one 's attention based on a moment by moment. And it seems to understand, in effect, the importance of being in the moment.
Therefore, I suggest that to approach life in maybe a better way for us is to let go of these widely held ideas of the past and future and how they affect us. This does not mean that we are no longer able to learn about what has happened or that we are not ready for what may come. Instead, since that is what we have now, we can prefer to live in the present and savor the moment. We will learn to free ourselves from the never-ending guilt and anxiety and only concentrate on whatever present involvement we find ourselves in. Our right to think and act does not lie in what we think is the past or what we think is the future, but in the present moment. It is no longer possible to alter what has happened and what will happen is always beyond our influence. Therefore, concentrating on the current moment in which change happens will be better because our ability to change something exists only in the present.
Period Beyond
If we accept that time is merely a reflection of changes perceived, then what if we have not changed? Let us imagine the transition is unaffected by us. And then imagine seeing something that has constantly changed.
And since we are unchanging, this altering phenomenon does not affect our constant selves. A new consciousness is also a transition. Our knowledge of this evolving thing before us, therefore, will be complete immediately. Our unchanging and timeless selves will simultaneously see its history, present, and future.
To explain more clearly, imagine a shifting entity being presented to an everlasting and unchanging consciousness. The everlasting consciousness will outlast it, regardless of how long this entity exists. And so it would have been possible for this everlasting consciousness to see all the changes that have influenced it, as well as all the changes that would affect it in the future. It can seem that the past, present, and futures are the same for an everlasting and unchanging being.
Based on this hypothetical fact, it will then follow that our past and future concepts occur only because of the changes we experience.
Imagine, from afar, observing the changing world. Although you yourself remain unchanged and untouched, you watch everyone and everything in motion. But unexpectedly you are thrown into the changing world. And the universe also changes you. Then it would seem like you were trapped in an obvious time flow because you are witnessing transition inside and without now.
Divinity and Time
If there is something everlasting and unchanging, such as our definition of an all-powerful Deity, how should we say that He has seen all that has happened and will happen? And if this everlasting consciousness exists, does that mean that there is no past, present, or future, since this consciousness has seen all of this already?
If we are to base the Bible on our interpretation of God, then let us consider the following verses that can give us a glimpse of how God sees time.
(Matthew 6:34, UCSSB). Jesus says, "Do not think about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself." Jesus emphasizes the present day, not an unknown future.
And let us take note of the changeless and everlasting existence of God in the following:
But do not neglect the one truth, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years * and a thousand years as one day "(2 Peter 3:8, UCSSB). 2 Peter 3:8."
"Yesterday, today, and forever, Jesus Christ is the same" (Hebrews 13:8, UCSSB).
"The beginning and the end, I am the Alpha and the Omega" (Revelation 21:6, UCSSB).
Let me add an idea that I came up with concerning emotions. Why is it that love seems to be the most impervious to the passing of time among all emotions? Rage and hate, sorrow, and fear can all fade away. But love, when it's true, seems to persist. To explain, the bond of love between you feels unaltered when you meet an old friend after years or even decades.
It has something to do with God, I believe. If God is everlasting, and "God is love" (1 John 4:8, UCSSB), then love does not shift like God.
By stating a paradox, let me finish. It took time for me to know that time didn't matter.
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