I’m sure you’ve heard of Einstein’s theory of relativity. If you don’t know the specifics behind it, you probably understand how it applies to your daily life. If you’re staring at a clock as the seconds tick by, time is going to feel very slow. If you’re doing something you absolutely love, time will pass in a perceived instant. What if I told you there’s another application in which we can use this principle? Before you cast me as a lunatic for trying to expand upon Einstein’s theory, hear me out…
It is my belief that time is also relative in terms of value judgements. By this I mean the perception of whether time is “good” or “evil”. I’d be surprised if you’ve ever thought about time in those terms - I certainly didn’t until I ran across a string of interesting concepts throughout the past year. As my new theory goes, the observer perceives time as “good” or “evil” based on current position, in this case mental position. This has major implications for the general worldviews that we hold - as you’d imagine, what you think about time is going to have a direct affect on what you think about life as a whole.
Time as God
Time certainly has a lot of properties that we would attribute to modern conception of God. Without time, there would be no experiential space. There would be no way for our spacial bodies to experience living - I’m imagining we’d all just be mushed together (I don’t know if that’s actually true). Time is literally a giver of life, and it is certainly a power much greater than any one of us. For all we know, time is actually God, and there are people who believe that (I’d count myself as one of them).
Enter the Omega Point Theory. From encyclopedia.com:
The concept of the Omega Point in science and religion discussions was introduced by Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) as a reference to Christ as the final goal of the evolutionary process. The Omega Point Theory, inspired by the language of Teilhard, is quite distinct from Teilhard's original idea. This theory was put forward by physicist and mathematician Frank Tipler in a series of articles in the late 1980s and popularized in his 1994 book The Physics of Immortality. Tipler theorizes that all matter will converge to an infinite all-knowing point at the end of a closed universe and that this point to which the universe is moving is the Omega Point. This Omega Point is the "god" that necessarily exists but is not the personal God of traditional theism.
Basically, the theory postulates that God is the process of time unfolding, all leading to the infinite, all-knowing state that so many religions and spiritualities attribute to God. That’s about my extent of knowledge into the subject, but even from a high level, it’s fascinating. Time has the properties of God, and may even be God.
Time as Devil
Without time there would be no life as we know it, but there would also be no suffering. It is precisely because we experience life temporally that suffering exists. The cruelest joke played on humanity is the fact that we can’t take back the past. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever - there are no redo’s. That alone, according to many (especially philosophical pessimists), is justification for a negative worldview, that time is actually a force of evil (and ipso facto so is the substance of existence).
The same logic applies to the future. We can’t make the future the present, no matter how hard we try. We dream of better days, but they’re somewhere off in the distance, at some point we can’t presently experience. Scariest of all - the big elephant in the room - is that the future brings with it death. Time gives us life, but it also ensures us death. As MGMT said in “Siberian Breaks,”
If you’re conscious you must be depressed, or at least cynical.
See, there’s conflict that arises between consciousness and temporal existence. We’re aware of ourselves, we’re aware we exist in time, and that causes the majority of pain and suffering of our race. If we were cats, we wouldn’t suffer in the way we do - cats aren’t aware of time like we are, so they’re not spending most of their time regretting the past or dreaming of the future. They’re just cats.
What’s Right?
Well, as the theory goes, that depends on you. Time is either God or Devil depending on what you decide it is. If you see it as benevolent force of creation that gives us the ability to experience ourselves, that’s what it will be. If you see it as a necessary force with malicious byproducts, that’s what it will be. If you’ve never thought about it, I hope this at least sparks some curiosity within you to think outside the box. As with most things, I’m sure we all oscillate between the two poles, but it might be useful to be aware of. It sure is for me.
Our dogs and cats truly live in the moment. They don't worry about past or anticipate future. They are fully present in each moment that they are here on this earth and I believe for this reason have unending amounts of love and joy to share. We have a tremendous amount to learn from them ....I believe the only thing that is real is the present moment. They now know memories are constantly changing as the brain processes them, they truly are stories our brain constructs
for us and the future is beyond anticipation ( no matter how much we think we can direct it's course , it is beyond our ability). The present moment is all we have. To live in it fully is to be the best version of ourselves.