Reflections on time....

Yin is the symbol of earth, femaleness, darkness, passivity and absorption, present in even nYumbers, in valleys and streams where yang is conceived of as heaven, maleness, light, activity, and penetration. Both help to elucidate the Chinese belief in a cyclical theory of becoming and dissolution and an interdependence between the world of nature and human events.
The notion of the cyclical as opposed to the linear theory of time connotes a very different concept of time and our relationship to time….”The aboriginal concept of time differs from the Judeo-Christian perception of time in that aboriginal people do not perceive time as an exclusively linear category (i.e. past-present-future) and often place events in a ‘circular pattern of time in which an individual is in the centre of ‘time circles’ and event placed in time according to their relative importance for the individual and his or her community.” (from onlinelibrary.ciley.com).
“The reason why we see time as ‘linear’ is because of Christianity. The idea of Genesis (at the start) and Judgement Day (at the end) gives us a narrative- a linear view of time….Plato thought time was created by a Creator….Even his student, Aristotle, thought time wasn’t an independent thing but only a relational concept between objects. But Christians loved Plato…The early Christian Fathers quickly realized that their account of creation and the Biblical account of the Last Judgement could map really well onto this linear view of time….Not only was Judgement Day a balm to all (the) suffering, it also acted to structure the entire universe. Time was not some illusion, nor was it in infinite cycle. Rather, it was a deliberate narrative, written and overseen by God-our God. He had a plan, and ‘today’ is only one step along the way He laid out for us. The Church Fathers and various council that were charged with putting together the official orthodox Bible knew very well they were laying out a story like every other: It begins, the characters grow and change int eh middle, and it ends. The implications of this view—that God has created the universe with a narrative in mind—is that everything happens for a reason. It sets us up to believe there’s order in the madness and purpose in the chaos. This idea, called ‘Sacred Time,’ gave meaning to Christians and is something that still infuses how we see the world….(And yet) If you try to strip away all the ideological baggage with which we’re born, there’s not much that points toward linear time. The sun will rise and fall. Winter will pass and come back around with snowy regularity. History repeats itself. It’s why, across so much of human history, time is not viewed as a finite, closed line, but an infinite, repeating circle…..Of course, time is a hugely complex issue, an done which even today we’re having to unravel. But philosophically and phenomenologically*, Aristotle hit the nail on the head. As Carlo Rovelli explains in his book, ‘The Order of Time,’ ‘Time, as Aristotle suggested, is the measure of change; different variables can be chosen to measure that change, and none of these has all the characteristics of time as we experience it. But this does not alter the fact that the world I sin a ceaseless process of change.….(a brief history of time by Jonny Thomson, philosophy instructor at Oxford…from bigthink.com. Thomson’s Instagram account is called Mini Philosophy @philosophyminis. His first book is Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas)

 

Our deeply embedded culture, in the concept of linear time, however noble and honourable, and even potentially theologically arguable, poses many serious issues, none of them likely about to be exposed in open, serious and warranted public debate.

Our shared capacity to manage, control and depend upon the micro-dissection, exposure and implementation of linear time came abruptly into our mailbox a few weeks back. Inside was an envelope with a provincial government address; it put a slight frown of interest and questioning on my face, until I opened it. Inside were two pieces of paper: one with photos of our vehicle in the middle of an intersection with a red light also in the photo. As the driver of the car, I had taken .5 seconds into that red light, after the light changed from orange to red. The camera was apparently posted high on a metal post with a capacity to shoot such aberrant driving behaviour. Naturally, we paid the considerable fine, and then were left with the lingering impression that, while no one ‘wants’ to ‘run a red light’ and while this is not something I have ever been charged with previously, the manner of the investigation, documentation and conviction, (with the opportunity to appeal), based on technology I did not “know” was there, opens a host of questions.

There are times, of course, when a split second can mean the difference between moving through an intersection safely and colliding with another vehicle. Some drivers turn right into traffic thereby cutting that traffic off, without a camera to document the risk. Others pass on double solid lines on inclines when oncoming traffic cannot be visible; others drive so ponderously that, on two-lane highways, they generate a back-log of several vehicles each of which have an increasingly frustrated driver, without a camera’s witness.

Another implicit and seemingly now tolerated, and even embraced implication of the linear concept of time is chanted by American politicians in their normal political rhetoric…we are working toward a ‘more-perfect union’. As if….and the implication, from Christianity, that, after all the pain and suffering of a life on earth, the world is promised an afterlife of painless security, at least for those who ‘believe’. And that promise, while it ostensibly offers that ‘prize in the cracker-jack box of life’ of a place in heaven for eternity, nevertheless entraps many of those propagating that theology and those drinking that hope, into a state of mind and heart that, apparently would not evoke, generate and produce “good behaviour” without that carrot.

Pavlov’s dogs, salivating at the sound of that ‘bell’, however, we are not. And the Christian notion of a form of classical conditioning, complete with the sanctions of an afterlife of purgatory and/or Hell, seem to embed a deeply troubling concept of the nature of human beings as depraved, and dependent on the saving of the grace of God. And, while the Bible begins in a garden and ends in heaven, and thereby provides a template or a typology that suggests, metaphorically, that the human story is generally envisioned as the journey from the garden to the city on the hill, the very metaphor that helped elect presidents, (think especially Ronald Regan, famous for repeating the image).

Idealism, of course, is the stuff of the American psyche, and much of it has been constructed on the footings of the Christian faith. The linear concept of time, however, is clearly not only not the only or the bet or the most ethical notion of time in the universe.

Einstein’s theory of relativity in which rates of time run differently depending on relative motion, and space and time are merged into spacetime, where we live on a world line rather than a timeline. In this view, time is a coordinate. Time is neither linear or circular. It does not flow or move but allows others to do so. So, the cycles we observe have nothing to do with time, except that time will enable them to exist. (Wikipedia)

In quantum mechanics, time is understood as an external (’Classical’) concept.  So it is assumed, as in classical physics, to exist as a controller of all motion--either as absolute time or in the form of proper times defined by a classical spacetime metric (link.springer.com)

quantamagazine.org, in a piece by Dan Falk, July 19, 2016, reads this way:

According to our best theories of physics, the universe is a fixed block where time only appear to pass. Yet a number of physicisit hope to replace this ‘block universe’ with a physical theory of time….Einstein’s masterpiece, the general theory of relativity, and the ‘Standard Model of particle physics. The laws that underlie these theories are time-symmetric—that is, the physics they describe is the same, regardless of whether the variable called ‘time’ increases or decreases. Moreover, they say nothing at all about the point we call ‘now’- a special moment (or so it appear) for us, but seemingly undefined when we talk about the universe at large. The resulting timeless cosmos is sometimes called a ‘block universe’- a static block of space-time in which any flow of time, or passage through it must presumably be a mental construct or other illusion….(Other physicists think)  the universe is not static. The passage time is physical. ‘I’m sick and tired of this block universe,’ said Avshalom Elitzur, a physicist and philosopher formerly of Bar Ilan University. “I don’t think that next Thursday has the same footing as this Thursday. The future does not exist. It does not! Ontologically#, it’s not there.’

Whether or not the question of ‘time’ is amenable to some equation, or even metaphor, that encompasses reason, intuition, imagination and theology, as well as unique cultural/historical/indigenous notions, seems to be a question far beyond the ‘pay-grade’ of this scribe.

Nevertheless, how we perceive the time we ‘live’ and the time before and the time after, have had, continue to have, and will undoubtedly continue to have a significant impact on our lives, whether we are conscious of that impact or not. And, for simple minds like this scribe’s, the issue of satiety/scarcity/abundance is one that we can each grasp intellectually as well as emotionally. And how we ‘spend’ (even if the concept is not empirically measurable and verifiable) our moments, our hours, days, weeks and decades is a matter of considerable significance.

Linearity, however, seems to be a concept that warrants considered scepticism, whether from a scientific or a psychological or a spiritual or a religious perspective. And, even beginning the release of the apparent constrictions that linearity implies/implicates, is a start to a more free, and free-association with our ancestors, and those who come after us. We really are all part of the river that flows from the earliest known living things until whenever….

And that, for this scribe, is a rather considerable and momentous notion to be integrated into one’s life.