Everything2
Near Matches
Ignore Exact
Full Text
Everything2

The Nature of Time

created by smileloki

(idea) by smileloki (1.1 y) (print)   ?   (I like it!) Tue Jul 08 2003 at 2:24:30

I've been thinking a lot about the nature of time recently and I've come to realize the following:

Often people think how far away the moment that happened in the past is important and that it can some how be undone if it wasn't all that long ago. It's like when you say something and then realize you shouldn't have said it, but the damage is already done and even if it's just a second past you already have to deal with the consequences and can't just re-do that moment. That moment is just as gone as a year ago is.

At the same time, the farther away the moment gets the easier it is to deal with. You lose the feeling of it being close enough to taste but still gone and you learn to live with whatever happened. The time for damage control passes and you keep going from where ever you are.

It's been said that time isn't really linear and we're just limited by our perception and because we're limited by linear perception everything we create is as well. Kurt Vonnegut best tackles the idea in Slaughterhouse Five with Billy Pilgrim and the idea that he'd come unstuck in time. The problem with accepting a view of time like that is that we'd never be really able to change a moment and that we could go through them again but never really have free will. If we were able to change these moments you wouldn't be able to put time in any sort of line at all as we are able to now and travel up and down it, it would be more of a jumble and the "past" and "future" would change every time and you would never be able to travel back to a previous "future" because you changed its past.

And with that tangle of words I return to my thoughts as I travel into my future, never to experience this moment again.


printable version
chaos

Linear time and real time Kurt Vonnegut Free will Make me one with everything
The Nature of Man Billy Pilgrim Slaughterhouse Five Back to the Future
Damage control At this point in time Psychology of Time The view from my room
The flowers smiled, but she was gone Far, Far Away July 7, 2002 Getting to know you noders fucking sucked
Y'know, if you log in, you can write something here, or contact authors directly on the site. Create a New User if you don't already have an account.
  Epicenter
Login
Password

password reminder
register

Everything2 Help

Cool Staff Picks
Just another sprinkling of indeterminacy
Édouard Manet
I Believe in Everything
How to calm a cat in heat
Mother's Day
Occam's Revenge
I will be the first thing you will be thinking about after you wake
Vengeance Served Cold; or, A Pyrrhic Victory
Viktor Belenko
Do you take it I would astonish? Does the daylight astonish?
Egyptian rat screw
Chipirones en su tinta
From a Broken Letter
vampire
New Writeups
Heitah
Why I love Everything2(person)
trixingee
Dungeon Mastering for the first time(idea)
Netrat0
It's Called Subtext, Honey(person)
eyeofthebeholder
The Dragon(idea)
Heitah
consist, comprise, constitute, or compose(idea)
Meezzio
Gotlandssnus(thing)
argv
Astral Plane(idea)
Madara
One Winged Angel(fiction)
Tom Rook
Talk is cheap(poetry)
shaogo
Adelle Davis(person)
Aerobe
race car g sfjsgsd(poetry)
Binah
Dream Log: July 5, 2008(dream)
StrawberryFrog
Forgotten things in space(idea)
antigravpussy
velvet revolution fairy tale(idea)
Heitah
Nerve agent VX(thing)
This affordable entertainment brought to you by The Everything Development Company