"Well what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today..."
Quote from Groundhog Day (1993)
Quote from Groundhog Day (1993)
Interestingly my topic selection is quite clearly provoked yet again. Groundhog Day is playing in the background of my tapping fingers (for a third time), while I am pouring out thoughts into words on the border between Christmas Eve and Christmas, being in both in my home and university Time Zones.
So, to briefly enlist the facts up for discussion on the table:
An immediate attempt to revoke my claim is counter-claiming that "tomorrow", "today" and "yesterday" are just relative pointers to an absolute frame of reference (i.e. some time line). Sure, very classical and very false. I am not a physicist but I still know time has turned out to be a very complex beast, both in its classical or in any of the modern senses. Hence, the classically inherited reference system of a simplified time line propagating from the Big Bang until the "end of time" is not something I am satisfied with.
I will take a fundamental, idealistic and philosophically motivated standpoint. Time is movement. In a static world, there is no change but a perpetual steady state. We name this motionless state of the human mind as death and classically connect it to perfection (hence gods). I don't particularly or fully endorse the classical views, but I agree with the fundamental concept.
Next, about perception of time. Our powers of observation act in the three dimensions of space,** hence are "stateless" with respect to time. It is our internal reasoning that differentiates a series of observations to develop an observation of "change" over movement, or respectively change over time.
Imagine a scenario where the "outer" world comes to a stop, a full halt, a complete static standstill. However, your "inner" world, your mind, is still ticking, moving about and hence "reasoning". Given our limited perception you would not be able to understand and observe whether the entire world has come to a rapid halt or it is your conscience that has become trapped in a timeless snapshot of the outer reality. This is a crucial point to get across as it reveals the inherent relativity of time, or movement! And, without further delay, allows me to briefly state that in order for one to meaningfully discuss time in any discourse, one should refer to time from an introspective, experience-moderated perspective.
Well, when I take this as ground zero and think about "tomorrow" as a concept, I inevitably feel compelled to a subconscious predisposition of an external, absolute time frame, modulated into the usual calendar pieces. This is an outcry against this slavery of my mind to a blatantly false, yet immensely convenient dogma to get by in the society of man.
At the threshold between the subconscious and conscious embrace of the true nature of time, Zen awaits at the gates. There is a sharp contrast between the subconscious alignment to a time axis and the conscious race to a growing acceleration of movement. While our concept of days and weeks stay the same, the movement/day ratio is increasing exponentially, ever more notably in the 21st century. Soon, I feel, our classic tradition of measuring time would become so inadequate, or at least unintuitive, that the direct correlation between time and movement could become less and less apparent and harder to relate to. Interestingly, some changes might occur then.
What I would personally hope and wish for is a timing system based on the iterations and operations in the human mind. A split, if you will, between an internal and an external reference frame of time, keeping the astronomical bodies as the external reference frame and introducing the rightful cornerstone of the internal frame - our minds.
And hence the fork:
God is absolute, hence god is eternal - it transcends our reality, it is not bound by the laws of our universe. But having an external reference that transcends our reality gives ground to potential paradoxes and more importantly requires a measure of a transcendent level of reality. There is a formal approach to tackle the first problem, called hiding, which covers any knowledge or power beyond the containable in our system/universe and translates all needed measurements in an axiomatic way. It principally justifies why a book of God or any other true religious artifact can never be justified/explained in our, lower, reality.
Consequence 1. Divinity is by definition beyond perception, justification and true understanding in any lower realm.
The second problem, measuring a transcendent entity, could be in principle achieved given an equality in power of the features one wants measured. In other words, time in our system must be of the sаme nature and properties as demonstrable in our own system/universe. Next, a measure procedure can only be provided by the transcendent system, as no proof of its correctness and completeness could be provided in the system of lesser expressivity/power.
Consequence 2. Measuring time, in the absolute sense, is only possible through a transcendent procedure which could never be obtained from our own plane of reality.
Now that we are left with no hope of an appropriate external solution to grasping time (unless a transcendent one is given to us, which is an event with unknown likelihood) let us turn to the internal approach of solving the problem.
Yet to be solved. Potentially equivalent to circumventing the Incompleteness of the Self by means of restraining its allowed reasoning and expressivity and, more importantly, by non-trivially coupling and synchronizing it with other Selfs by means of (reliable) communication.
This is a wonderfully complex, challenging and mind-boggling problem to solve, which has the huge trade-off of having implications far beyond our imagination could stretch. And hence I name this section "Hope" as opposed to "Solution".
I hope reading this had as much of an impact to you, as writing it had to me.
Footnotes:
* There is a second issue at hand here, namely how our experience renders us to feel completely natural with this artificiality and making us comfortable with the idea that possibly very short-lived cycles propagate into eternity.
** This implicitly refers to vision. Perceiving sound and smell follow the same argument. Technically, even vision is fundamentally two dimensional, the third dimension being derived by the visual centers of the brain.
So, to briefly enlist the facts up for discussion on the table:
- No one has ever experienced tomorrow. (Trivially: it is always today by definition)
- Everyone has the habit of actually planning our tomorrows and indeed carrying out that plan in a subsequent today.
- Clearly, tomorrow's don't exist as we can't experience them, but they seem to be a good way of planning out a (alternate?) today.
An immediate attempt to revoke my claim is counter-claiming that "tomorrow", "today" and "yesterday" are just relative pointers to an absolute frame of reference (i.e. some time line). Sure, very classical and very false. I am not a physicist but I still know time has turned out to be a very complex beast, both in its classical or in any of the modern senses. Hence, the classically inherited reference system of a simplified time line propagating from the Big Bang until the "end of time" is not something I am satisfied with.
I will take a fundamental, idealistic and philosophically motivated standpoint. Time is movement. In a static world, there is no change but a perpetual steady state. We name this motionless state of the human mind as death and classically connect it to perfection (hence gods). I don't particularly or fully endorse the classical views, but I agree with the fundamental concept.
Next, about perception of time. Our powers of observation act in the three dimensions of space,** hence are "stateless" with respect to time. It is our internal reasoning that differentiates a series of observations to develop an observation of "change" over movement, or respectively change over time.
Imagine a scenario where the "outer" world comes to a stop, a full halt, a complete static standstill. However, your "inner" world, your mind, is still ticking, moving about and hence "reasoning". Given our limited perception you would not be able to understand and observe whether the entire world has come to a rapid halt or it is your conscience that has become trapped in a timeless snapshot of the outer reality. This is a crucial point to get across as it reveals the inherent relativity of time, or movement! And, without further delay, allows me to briefly state that in order for one to meaningfully discuss time in any discourse, one should refer to time from an introspective, experience-moderated perspective.
Well, when I take this as ground zero and think about "tomorrow" as a concept, I inevitably feel compelled to a subconscious predisposition of an external, absolute time frame, modulated into the usual calendar pieces. This is an outcry against this slavery of my mind to a blatantly false, yet immensely convenient dogma to get by in the society of man.
At the threshold between the subconscious and conscious embrace of the true nature of time, Zen awaits at the gates. There is a sharp contrast between the subconscious alignment to a time axis and the conscious race to a growing acceleration of movement. While our concept of days and weeks stay the same, the movement/day ratio is increasing exponentially, ever more notably in the 21st century. Soon, I feel, our classic tradition of measuring time would become so inadequate, or at least unintuitive, that the direct correlation between time and movement could become less and less apparent and harder to relate to. Interestingly, some changes might occur then.
What I would personally hope and wish for is a timing system based on the iterations and operations in the human mind. A split, if you will, between an internal and an external reference frame of time, keeping the astronomical bodies as the external reference frame and introducing the rightful cornerstone of the internal frame - our minds.
And hence the fork:
- An outer tomorrow - the frame between the next Sunrise and Sunset, or averaged to the full cycle of a classical watch, would remain as-is. (but could be redefined with respect to any external and observable object)
- An inner tomorrow - In my own eyes would be the frame between the awaking of our minds from sleep, to the next period of hibernation. In this sense, we group our tasks/ideas/thoughts into such that can be addressed at the moment, given some order (today) or as such that could be addressed during our next wakefulness cycle (tomorrow) and possibly later.
External solution: God defined as the absolute reference to motion/change.
God is absolute, hence god is eternal - it transcends our reality, it is not bound by the laws of our universe. But having an external reference that transcends our reality gives ground to potential paradoxes and more importantly requires a measure of a transcendent level of reality. There is a formal approach to tackle the first problem, called hiding, which covers any knowledge or power beyond the containable in our system/universe and translates all needed measurements in an axiomatic way. It principally justifies why a book of God or any other true religious artifact can never be justified/explained in our, lower, reality.
Consequence 1. Divinity is by definition beyond perception, justification and true understanding in any lower realm.
The second problem, measuring a transcendent entity, could be in principle achieved given an equality in power of the features one wants measured. In other words, time in our system must be of the sаme nature and properties as demonstrable in our own system/universe. Next, a measure procedure can only be provided by the transcendent system, as no proof of its correctness and completeness could be provided in the system of lesser expressivity/power.
Consequence 2. Measuring time, in the absolute sense, is only possible through a transcendent procedure which could never be obtained from our own plane of reality.
Now that we are left with no hope of an appropriate external solution to grasping time (unless a transcendent one is given to us, which is an event with unknown likelihood) let us turn to the internal approach of solving the problem.
Internal solution:
The Self defined as the absolute reference to motion/change
Introspective Perception defined as the true measure of motion
The Self defined as the absolute reference to motion/change
Introspective Perception defined as the true measure of motion
I do not intend to go into depth in discussing this, since the idea is rather intuitive and the counter-argument is a very famous one - Gödel's incompleteness theorems
Despair?
There is no reliable way to rely on ourselves and there is no hope in expecting a transcendent interference in our existence (and what's worse - there is no possibility to prove it would be actually doing the right thing). Is this the rock bottom point for this discussion in the form of a very elaborate blog post? Is there no way to go further down the road? I am afraid so. These are also two of the fundamental meta-reasons to be desperate about the potential of human sentience! So this morbid end would be well suited for the bitter taste in my and probably your mouth ...
Hope
Part 2. All for oneWell, I am still just human. I will jot down a final conjecture, yet to be tested by rigorous and detailed philosophical argumentation.
Here is the recipe:
Part 1. One for all
Here is the recipe:
Part 1. One for all
- Elaborate the Self as a meta-being to the external reality.
- In this view, the Self transcends the reality.
- Crucially, the Self intersects with the physical laws of reality as it is connected to it via a Body.
- Even more crucially, given consciousness, the Self is not bound by the physical laws of reality but is elevated to the meta-physical laws of logic and mathematics.
- The Self becomes capable of acting as a God, w.r.t to measuring external time.
- Any other Self_2 could abide by the transcendent measurements achieved via relating to Self_1, hence being granted absolute external time.
Yet to be solved. Potentially equivalent to circumventing the Incompleteness of the Self by means of restraining its allowed reasoning and expressivity and, more importantly, by non-trivially coupling and synchronizing it with other Selfs by means of (reliable) communication.
This is a wonderfully complex, challenging and mind-boggling problem to solve, which has the huge trade-off of having implications far beyond our imagination could stretch. And hence I name this section "Hope" as opposed to "Solution".
Conclusion
Trapped in tradition and classical falsity, I am happy I went on this conscious excursion to the possible realms of the future concept of time. The bitterness is still there, tomorrow is still never to be experienced, but a fundamental philosophical problem, lurking around the Incompleteness phenomenon has revealed yet another of its implications.
Trapped in tradition and classical falsity, I am happy I went on this conscious excursion to the possible realms of the future concept of time. The bitterness is still there, tomorrow is still never to be experienced, but a fundamental philosophical problem, lurking around the Incompleteness phenomenon has revealed yet another of its implications.
I hope reading this had as much of an impact to you, as writing it had to me.
Footnotes:
* There is a second issue at hand here, namely how our experience renders us to feel completely natural with this artificiality and making us comfortable with the idea that possibly very short-lived cycles propagate into eternity.
** This implicitly refers to vision. Perceiving sound and smell follow the same argument. Technically, even vision is fundamentally two dimensional, the third dimension being derived by the visual centers of the brain.
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