Time, in common language the description of the 4th dimension, is something required for our daily lives. We must hold a basic understanding of time, in order to use future or past tense when composing sentences. As with most things, this is not actively recognized, as it is not necessary for our every day use.
Nonetheless, time is used, not only as a measurement between what happened, the now, and what will happen, but also for transitions. For instance, every living thing is first born, then grows up, and is bound to at some point, die. This is a way of using our perception of time to describe how the state of something may change.
What we use to help recall the past is memory. In my previous post I gave a brief explanation on memory and how it might not be a reliable tool. However, to actually understand that there is a past, we need memory to tell us what has happened. Without memory, we would not know of the past, and thus it would make it difficult to perceive time.
Without a past, the future would be questioned, too. For without experience, although experience could be said to exist without memory, we could not be able to predict the future. Similarly, any scientific experiment would be of no meaning, as nobody could have evidence from experience, and thus empiricism, if something works. Now, one could argue that with the invention of physical memory, such as writing and other techniques, we would be remembered of what has happened. However, with no memory, what happened 10 seconds ago would be unknown, and thus impossible to write down.
Now, over to a more in-touch with reality subject, how we perceive time is rather subjective. Some, when they think of how they would see time, see a transition of an object, whereas others may see the object multiplied, and for every new instance of the object, slightly changed, to explain the transition without actually using time, which is the case in the 1st example. Continuing, time may be perceived as a path, most easily described as a line, with dots for every event.
This is commonly used when illustrating history, and rather objective, except for the implementation of the dots.
For my own perspective, I view time as an infinite amount of roads, if I was to use a figure of speech somewhat easy to understand. You are currently standing on one road, and in front of you, you’ve got an endless amount of roads and intersections, as far as your eyes can see. Behind you, you have a known path, the one you have “walked”. It goes back to when you were born, and possibly beyond that. It has a set amount of intersections, one for every option you may have chosen.
The point here, is that you, or other people for you, have made certain choices throughout your life. Every choice made has brought you further down the road, where every intersection has been where you had to choose between things. In the long run, you have made your way down a path unique to you.
This is my way of perceiving the past. Every single instance in the past could have been different, a slightly different choice could have brought you down another path, depending on where it lead. Some small choices might change your path completely, but for most of the time, they barely matter, leaving you on your main road in the end.
When investigating your past, you might find a dozen things which could have gone different and made you go some elsewhere.
For the present, you undoubtedly stand in an intersection, pondering what choice to make. You might stand in a larger or smaller one, depending on the importance of your choice.
Even if you may claim to be standing in several intersections at once, this is probably not the case. For the choice you first make brings you forward, to the next intersection, even if all of these end up at the larger intersection. The outcome of that, larger choice is then partially decided by from what way you came.
As for future, you may have figured it out a long while ago, but the future follows the same pattern. When you set up a goal, you, in my maze of roads-figure, set up a location to which you will attempt to reach.
If you view this as a whole, you get a complex of roads, where the intersections represent your choices made and your choices possible to make and where these different choices will lead. One axis represents, if not a direct measure of time, your choices, from your first to your infinitely last. The length between each choice is ignorable, as the roads are not linear, and you do not live forever, but have infinite options.
Another axis (if we would use the Cartesian 2 dimensional coordinate system, the first would be the x-axis and this would be the y-axis) can be set to represent, for instance, the positiveness of a choice and where it leads, for instance higher values on the y-axis could be said to be better choices, and lower would be worse ones.
However, measuring progress in terms of positivity and negativity is subjective, and it thus applies only to oneself. This, I would then say, is a way of measuring where you are and where you can go, and how good your choices are, rather than an objective interpretation of time.
If you will, fatalism can be easily applied to this system, for then every choice is pre-made, and you have a set path, of definite amount of choices you can make. Furthermore, the view I have described here also gives a good view of how determinism works, as every choice leads to another, in one way or another.
A light form of determinism would here mean that some intersections are set, meaning at one point or another, you will come across certain things. The outcome then depends on from where you came.
I hope that’s all for now.
Cheers, Kennie
