So, sitting in Concert Band, I had plenty of time for thinking. Looking at the clock, counting down the minutes till I was free (and if you think I'm exaggerating, try sitting through a concert band practice. It is hell!) I had a weird thought. It went something like this: 'I have another 60 / 30 / 15 / etc. minutes to go.'
Okay, not all that weird a thought, but hold on. Then I thought, 'Wait, WTF! You can't have "x minutes to go"' I mean, Of all the things we quantize, time seems to be the strangest. We often discuss the units without talking about the thing being measured, namely time. For example, how often have you heard, "I've got to wait a day." or "I've got 9 months till the babies born." But where's the thing being measured? Shouldn't it be "I've got to wait a day [of time]" or "I've got 9 months [of time] till the babies born." I realize this seems like trivialities. But I think it's an important distinction.
Why? Mainly because confusing the units for the thing is a real shitty thing to do. I've yet to find someone that says, "Oh, I've got 10 centimeters." What the fuck do you have 10 cm of? Gold? Iron? Paper? Shit? The units are valueless without involving the object being measured. This is true with time, perhaps even more so, considering time is all we have. Literally. The present, in it's unquantized form, is all we have.
(This problem stems from the deeper dilemma of limited / limiting worldviews. Yes, science has done wonders for the modern world. But nevertheless, it still imposes man-made restrictions on a reality that is truly man-proof. Whether we're talking Heisenberg or not, reality is way beyond our capabilities to understand. Not to say we shouldn't try and understand reality. On the contrary, we most certainly should. But let's realize how limited our understanding truly is and work from there.)
I just thought this was an interesting, novel, provocative thought. I'm not even going to scratch the topic of the relativity of time, etc. That's way over my head. But I think time is a topic worth a thought or two. In a society that rarely takes any "time" to just sit back and relax, a society ruled by clocks, whether literal or otherwise, it's important to take a step back and contemplate what exactly time is, and how we value it in society.
"Time is money"? No, I think it is so much more.
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2 comments:
That is pretty interesting. Although I wouldn't go and say I have a day of time because it is known that a day is specifically referring to the time period of one day... w/e the hell that is based on. But that's a matter of English, and English should burn.
That's the moral of life.
This is where I would give some really long speech on how time really works, but to be honest, I haven't the faintest clue. I, along with everyone else was brought up into a system where time is a fixed dimension that ensures events occur in conjunction with eachother. It is my understanding that that is how far evolution got as far as survival purposes.
1 Day is (10^43)x(3600)x(24) individual moments of time. Since our perception of time is much like watching a film... its nothing but a series of pictures (moments) running by us so fast it blurs into motion. Since time is countable, no other unit is required, beyond a frame of reference for relativity-purposes.
Boom!
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