Could You Abandon Time?

As much as I love the thought of time as a fabricated human concept that we can release ourselves from, I can hardly imagine living without it. In this day and age is it really possible to disconnect from the shackles of time?

The clock has thoroughly imbued our existence. It wakes us up, it makes us keep appointments, makes us show up to work on time, tells us when to take our medicine. The list is endless.

Without imagining us being hippies or cave men, could you imagine living in modern society without time.

A quote from the matrix, a philosophical film, but imagine the word purpose being replaced by the word time.

It is purpose that created us, purpose that connects us, purpose that pulls us, that guides us, that drives us, that defines us, it is purpose that binds us.

Wikiquote: The Matrix Reloaded

I'll try to refrain from participating in the thread as I'm more interested in hearing your thoughts.

PS: Is it time that gives us purpose in life?

reply to post by Droogie


According to Einstein, we can't live without time, as time is space and since we have mass, we take up a place in time-space. Time is not something invented by man, although we invented a method to measure time.

--airspoon

reply to post by airspoon


As time is something percieved and not measured, it's still something abstract. Who decides how long a second lasts? Who decides how long a minute lasts? And how is this done?

The fact remains, it's still a subject of human perception.

Well its hard to release oneself from the fact the sun comes up and sets everyday. Living external to time is a luxury the dead enjoy.

reply to post by Droogie


A "second" is only man's measurment of time. Furthermore, a "second", according to our own measurments, is relative to each person making the measurment. There are certain variables that make it differ from each observer, of course according to Einstein and his theory of relativity. For instance, gravity or mass can make time differ between two observers. I suggest you read up on the theory of relativity.

--airspoon

Ever seen the movie click?

Time is a lot like that.

When you focus on it, it goes by slowly and you can make changes to your behavior.

However, if you attempt to live "outside" of time; you will be disturbed have fast your life will accelerate.

I mean literally years will go by extremely fast.

Time itself is a word, nothing more. It’s a descriptor that allows us to differentiate from two differing events ( throwing a ball, to catching the ball). However it is just a term. The perception of it itself is what we use to describe events. Now, if our lives are full of more and more events, time is going to *appear* to move quicker than usual. You know when you’re a kid and the only worry was “what am I going to play with now?” Time moved slowly, one day felt like a million adventures as we didn’t have as much to think about as we would when we grow up. However now that were older, the more things we have on our minds the quicker the days/months/years go, because were not just thinking about “what are we gonna do now” we now constantly have thoughts/sounds/perspectives/conversations bombarding our mind. Look at this example as plain as day.
Age 10 – Billy throws you the ball… your internal thoughts from when it leaves his hand to when it reaches yours are mainly “gotta catch the ball gotta catch the ball”
20 years later – Billy throws you the ball, your internal thoughts go “its sure is hot, I don’t wanna worry about bills, what am I gonna do about this and that “ and the ball is in your hands before you know it.
The perspective of time is based on your focus at the time.
Or that’s how I feel about it.
Its not consistent therefore is nothing more than a word. The only thing that makes it consistant is we made a clock, a 24 hour day and such. If we based it off the sun and moon, every day would be more or less than 24 hours depending on when the sun set and rose.

Time is the measurement of Motion, Specifically the earth rotation of a 24 hours period forming a solar day.

This earth Orbit around the sun, the sun around the galaxy and galaxy around the Universe are too abstract to discuss, but we can break down the solar day further;

We use Base 10 number system, mainly derived as result of counting with our fingers, however some civilizations used base 12 and Base 60 to count, it is believed due to the 12 knuckles on the four finger and using the thumb to indicate a particular knuckle, counting to 12 was easily accomplished with one hand OR, the 12 main constellations marking out the night sky, etc.

The Sumerian astronomy sciences used base 60, which is a number easily divided by the first Six numbers as well as 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30. The Base 60 system works so well we still use it for geography, angles, and time.

But these all still boil down to measuring motion, even the second is based on the energy transitions of the Cesium Atom, as used by the Atomic Clock.

Originally posted by Droogie
reply to post by airspoon

 

As time is something percieved and not measured, it's still something abstract. Who decides how long a second lasts? Who decides how long a minute lasts? And how is this done?

The fact remains, it's still a subject of human perception.

Time: second

The second is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770vibrations of the cesium-133 atom. A minute is 60 of those.
NIST decides, by the way. Let's hope they do a better job counting Cesium-133 vibrations than they did timing the fall of Building 7.

And in the end it really doesn't matter. Time is just nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.