I feel so different today. It must be a New Year.
Last night I was so glad to see 2011 go. It felt exactly like it did on New Year’s Eve of 2010, 2009, 2008…
It’s the same “time” of year that we desire to be the type of person that we didn’t become last year. To make the type of changes that we didn’t make last year. But why does this cycle seem to continue year after year after fantastically-too-quick and full-of-letdowns year?
Time is something that we made up to make sense of our finitude. As humans, we are limited. We can’t grasp the idea of infinity and we struggle to think beyond the confines of our minds. So we created time. We made a calendar. We determined that the rising and setting sun and the rhythms of the seasons and harvests determine for us when we are supposed to do things. To wake up. To plant. To eat. To go.
As if humanity is not limited enough to begin with, our quantifying creation limits us even further. We’re late. We don’t have enough time. We can’t get things done. We can’t make things happen.
We can’t dream. When we sleep, it is typically too short to dream. When we are awake, we are too tired and frantic to dream. And if we do dream of something we think, “I’d like to do that but I just don’t know when I’ll do it. There’s just not enough time.”
We made clocks that tick and tock and move aimlessly into a future that doesn’t even exist. We wait for things to pass only to look back and discover what we could have done with our “time.”
What could you do if time didn’t exist? Oh, wait. It doesn’t.
Time is an ultimate, even for God. Theology would have been crafted very differently had theologians in the past thought God essentially and everlastingly timefull rather than timeless. Time ultimately matters, just as life and love ultimately matter.
Tom
How do we or can we know time is an ultimate? Could it be that it seems ultimate, even to ancient minds and voices, because of our limitedness? We just don’t know any other way to think or operate?
Isn’t it about “time” you started asking questions that are theologically and ministerially relavent? Once again you pander to a philosophical position that is ultimately unknowable; while I admire your consistency, there is a glaring issue of validity to address within your logic. Specifically, if it exists outside te bounds of possible human comprehension, how is it relavent to our understanding of God, humanity, creation, etc? Can God lift a rock so big he can’t lift it? Classic double-bind philosophy where some attribute of God is compromised, in this case omnipotence, that really has no bearing on what faith in Christ is all about. And for what it’s worth, within quantum physics defining a construct as non-existent only validates its existence. That’s like saying, “I have no brains.” Zero is still a unit of brains, even in the absence
of measurability. “There is no such thing as time.” In your claim you actually posit that time exists, rather than proving that it does not. Happy New Year. I hope those changes you’ve been working on you alluded to in your post work out for you this year. If not, there’s always next time…
We cannot know time is an ultimate, in the sense of knowing with certainty. We can’t know much of anything important with certainty. Our task is to construct a way of thinking about God and being in the world that seems most plausible. And, as you point out, everything about our lived experience says we must take time with utmost seriousness. Why not take it with absolute/ultimate seriousness? To me, this seems wisest and in keeping with the dominant strands of the biblical and scientific traditions.
Tom,
“We can’t know much of anything important with certainty.” SO TRUE! I wish our communities in the West would be more accepting of this. We are a bunch of gnostics continually appealing to reason and rationality rather than mystery.
I like your line of thinking regarding the human task of constructing ways to think about God. What if constructing ways to think about, speak about, and imitate God requires imagination? I would propose imagination as absolutely essential and might assume that you would suggest the same. If so, imagination would be an ultimately serious way to consider who God is a how we enact the missio dei. Is it a “waste of time” :-{) to play with the idea (imagine) that time (or at lease time as we understand it) does not exist? Things, possibly mission, personal transformation, etc., that we insist are either processional or instantaneous are quite open to the experience.
I hope we, the collective community of humans, can venture to think beyond our limited and often self-imposed constructs to imagine something other than our perceived reality. What if there is something in our dominant strands of tradition that theologians and scientists have missed? What if the dominant strands of tradition are dominant not because they are true but because they have been accepted by the public?
Obviously there is A LOT more here than an idea about time.
Does science count as a relevant source for this query? If so, then there is plenty of reason to think that time exists. Units of time (seconds, days, years) might not be real. They are man-made indexes of time, based upon our subjective vantage point of the sun. However, that the big bang and this very moment are not happening simultaneously (unless you’re traveling the speed of light), that the words in this post were not typed instantly (unless you’re traveling the speed of light), and that space is tied up with time (such that approaching the speed of light effects not only your perspective of space, but of time) indicates that time is every bit as real as the keyboard on which you typed this post and the electrical signals that sent it to a server somewhere.
If science is not a relevant source in this conversation, then nevermind. I am not interested when science is not allowed a voice.
Nick,
A couple non-rhetorical questions on your theme of science:
Is “time” a scientific law?
Or… are our units that index time used to make “time” seem like a law?
I do not think that time is a law. However, there are law-like features of the universe which involve time. For example, gravity pressupposes that objects with a certain mass will draw other objects of less mass towards them. Earth’s mass is such that a law-like formula has been made to predict how objects falling towards earth will accelerate. This formula involves time. However, what makes the formula work is the fact that time is measured in man-made units.
And I do not think that units are made to make time seem like a law. I think units were created because they were extremely useful. They are used to allow us to pick out moments that are not right now more precisely. For example, “four days ago” is much more specific than, “that one moment before this one.” Units of time are also used to compare important information. If a scientist knows that a meteor is headed towards earth and he is not able to use units of time measurement, then he has no way of knowing when it might collide with earth. Surely you and I would want to know if the meteor will hit within our lifetime.
I was thinking about this at work today and I think that if you are still convinced that both time (and not just its man-made units of measure) is pure fiction, a human confabulation designed to “make sense of our finitude,” then I challenge you to a new year’s resolution. During the period that most other people will call “the year 2012″, utter no sentences that involve time or its units (you’ll even have to abstain from putting the word time in quotes) and make no commitments to anything that require a commitment to the existence of time or a commitment to its man-made units. When you’ve had enough, blog about your experience. Because I think time is real, this seems impossible. If I am wrong however, your efforts could be a smashing success…heck, it could be the makings of a NYT bestseller.
What is 2012?
Nick,
While I wish I could accept your challenge, alas, I cannot. I think it could be a grand experience and quite enlightening. It is more important for me, however, to not violate relationship. Since I am surrounded by people who function according to their man-imposed limitations, I have found myself formed by and shaped according to the same limitations. For example, my wife has appointments with her doctor for the baby that currently resides in her. I would be violating my covenant, support, and commitment to her by not attending those appointments. I also have booked flights to another city and would lose an extraordinary amount of resources and violate relational covenants if I would not show up for my flight. These are the pitfalls of modern society that continue to perpetuate and necessitate the use of measurable units in our culture (whether they refer to something that actually exists or not). Nonetheless, sheer existence, is indeed possible without time or it’s units of measure. I am currently unwilling to move to an island by myself (which would make for a less interesting novel).
Culture is embedded making it’s constructs seem real.
“…sheer existence, is indeed possible without time or it’s units of measure.”
According to what we know have observed of particles at the macro level (the level at which humans experience spacetime), this actually isn’t possible (and if you meant that philosophically, I cannot not even conceive of it). Stuff moves and chemicals react and these things are never undone unless intervened upon (but even this type of “undoing” cannot be done on a cosmic scale). In this way, the universe is asymmetrical: things happen that cannot be undone…these irreversible things that happen is what I refer to when I say “time.”
If that is not real, then our experience (which occurs from various points in spacetime) is also not real. Alas, we cannot say that time is not real but space somehow is. They are either one thing or two inseparably-related things. Either they both are real or they both are not, period. If you and I think the stuff we see and touch is real (our wives, the baby you mention, the people to whom we have covenantal commitments, etc.), then we cannot sensibly say that time is not real. Either those things are real of they are not. If they are, then so is time.
I think I understand your frustration about our culture being obsessed with time, though. I totally resinate with the claim that our lives would be better off if we cared less about appointments, our age, and “productivity.” Being less enslaved to that concept of “time” is not something to which I would object (and as I tried to say earlier, that concept of “time” is not necessary real…appointments are not a lawlike feature of the universe). However, that the invention of the clock has brought fostered this contemptible condition is not sufficient reason to say that time doesn’t really exist. Clocks really do measure something that cannot be undone. If we got rid of clocks, something else would measure that irreversible thing (sunrises and sunsets were the previous form of clocks…that too could not be reversed…that too could enslave people to a “schedule”).
It seems, from my perspective, that you might be mixing up [not wanting something to be the case] with [it not actually being the case]. The evidence seems pretty clear about time. As of yet, the macro-claim you make has not been supported. I mean you no disrespect when I say that. It is just my observation. fortunately, I like conversation, so I would be happy to entertain how I am mistaken in my observations hitherto.
For what it is worth, other really smart people seem to think similarly to you. This article is from a professor of philosophy at Temple University: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/on-modern-time/
To be honest, I find it to be philo babble that is intended to sound profound. It completely fails to mention the germane scientific stuff. Still, this guy supposedly earned a PhD and someone thought his thoughts on the matter were worthy of publishing in the NYT, so even if what he says is babble, someone must think it has value of some sort.
All the best!
Yo Travis! Passed by your blog and this post caught my eye.
I have spent much time thinking on this general issue – time. To start, it sounds to me like you are saying thought created time, or rather, thought is time – in terms of time by the clock, calender, and so on. Now before jumping to the conclusion that time does not exist at all, lets go into time a little bit. Ever since the beginning of the universe (billions upon billions of years ago), matter has existed – or I think it fair to say that the matter that presently exists is dated back to the beginning of the universe. Once matter came into being so did measurement, say between two planets. Now the space between the two planets is an objectively measurable distance (the measurement of the distance between the two planets does not need human thought to define it in order for it to exist – it simply is). So we arrive at time because distance=measurement=time (the time it would take a space ship to travel between the two planets or light for that matter). It is important to realize that time is not an invention of thought as it is a quality of the universe with or without humankind to define it. Up until only around 1915 was time believed to be absolute, but in 1915 Einstein’s theory of general relativity put an end to the concept of absolute time (which is a whole other conversion!). But nonetheless, time as a quality of the universe is true.
So to get to your post. I believe we are talking, not about objective chronological time, but psychological time, and if there is any such thing. For example, the concept of a tomorrow or the future, and, speaking of New Years resolutions, time to better myself. I see what I am now and I say, “I will stop being greedy this year, starting tomorrow!” A person of a religion may say, “I must not sin, have lustful thoughts and all that, so I will work on it! But it will take some time.” This brings in the ideal and the projection of the ideal as something to travel toward, making the distance between what I am and what I idealize. I am a sinner now but I will travel (which implies time) to a better me, an ideal me. Of course this ideal self is merely a projection and not a reality, it is created by thought. Thought says I “should be this or that” but all that is true is “what is now” and not “what should or could be.” For example, the fact is I am violent so I create the ideal of non-violence and project it out in front of me as a goal to travel toward and someday reach (again this implies time – the time it will take to travel between what I am to the projection of what I want to be). So me in my violence seeks out a priest, pastor, a saint, a book, to tell me what to do in order to become non-violent in time. So I do what they all say and I end my journey where I began, with this violence in me. Now I say, “well that didn’t work so I will retreat into the mountains or some monastery and repeat some prayer 100x a day, or beat my body, and force this violence to become non-violent!” So I do that and again it is the same thing, I am still violent. But this time I delude myself into thinking all those things worked and I dull my mind by suppressing what is and has been since the beginning of this psychological journey through repeating mantras and escaping into so image I have constructed. So now the question is: Have we human beings, who are products of time in the objective cosmic sense, which use time technologically to travel from here to Paris, or the invention of the clock, etc. – have we applied this process of time inwardly, psychologically? And does psychological time exist at all (the concept of tomorrow, or the betterment of oneself through an ideal)?