Today I pick up this theme because it is our basic premise when we go to bed (we will get up tomorrow) and our basic premise when we wake up (we will live another day). Well… except if you are a suicide bomber in a rush to meet your 72 houris or if you decide to apply a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Not funny!
The first principle of economics is that resources are limited. In our case, time is limited, and that is at the core of all our endeavors.
If we look at life expectancy at birth in roman times it was between 20-30 years, late medieval times in Great Britain you could expect to live to your 30s, and in the mid-50s of the twentieth century it went up to 48 years (worldwide). Today life expectancy at birth in developed countries is around 75 to 80 years.
We have a limited amount of time, that is a fact, but it might be said that time has been provided in abundance in our day and age. So, why are we in a rush to do things, see things, try things …?
In Aristotle, time is fundamentally linked to change and movement. He explains time in terms of change. Following that logic, if there is little change there is not much time, regardless of the measurement in days, months or years. Four hundred years later, Seneca talks in his book “On the shortness of life” about “it is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. … The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully” This follows the Aristotle logic of making time count through meaningful change. St Thomas Aquinas a thousand years later identifies the same concept in his first way. Things do move, change is passing from potency to act; there must be a first mover, this first unmoved mover is God. God is pure act, no change is possible, so God is immortal. In Buddhism tradition, enlightened sages are often silent. They have achieved a state of mind where stillness is a permanent state. This is a somewhat timeless state.
We might say that these three schools of thought converge in the same definition of time through change and the pursuit of an ideal state of pure knowledge that is motionless and for that same reason timeless.
Well…let us come back to planet earth!
We have three elements at play. The irrefutable fact that we have a limited amout of time on earth, the quality of such time measured by the change we experience (the ambition to do as much as possible) and the goal to achieve a state of enlightenment that is close to stillness and permanence.
Let me start with the amount of change we experience in our lifetime. One interesting aspect of today’s world is the change of “topology”. In old times, the world was wide open and to a certain extent out of reach. We had wonderful stories of remote kingdoms with unthinkable treasures and beauties … that we decided to believe in. Change was slow, and the experience of time was different. Technology in transport made the world smaller even reachable. Regardless of how overwhelmed we were by cultures alien to ours, we began to have a sense that the world was finite. It took few months to come from Europe to the US or to India. In today’s modern world the time-space equation has changed dramatically.
The “annihilation of space by time” is a concept that already appears in Marx in the late XIXth century, in that case linked to capital accumulation, increased production, exchange, circulation and consumption. Not only transport technology but also exchange and consumption extended our experience of the world. That concept was further developed by Janelle (1969) in the time–space convergence (TSC) concept. TSC refers to the decline in travel time between locations as a result of transportation, communication, and related technological and social innovations.
Today’s topology goes even further. Our world today is defined as a network structure with connectivity among its nodes. That connection and the mere change in nature that occurs when an object is plugged into a network (us humans included) makes our world small, even crowded and perfectly reachable. That fast connectivity creates a sense of proximity that changes the perception of time even more. Change and movement in this new topology is constant.
So we have been given an enormous amount of extra time by our high standard of life and the time we live is far richer and more stimulating than ever!
But how do we experience time? Science concludes that the perception of time is physically located in the insular cortex. This is a place the size of a small almond on the side of our brain which integrates body signals and forms the anatomical and functional basis for the sense of time and awareness in general. But as anything physical, this little almond can be tricked to stop working…welcome immortality! This can be done by drugs (fast and furious) or by mediation (slow and mellow). When you slow down the parietal lobe, where the time-keeping system resides, the experience of time is modified.
So let us summarize, we are not immortal!
Well, I already knew that without the need to go from Aristotle to Buddhism or St Thomas Aquinas along with Marx and the internet!
You are right, but let me try to bring it together and … tell me what you think.
We have more time today than we have had in any time in human history, the quality of such time is also much better. We have access to a vast amount of information and access to many more experiences both physical (travel) and intellectual (mix of cultures in this global world of people and ideas). All those elements convey a sense of constant change and high speed counteracted by our need to slow down and reflect. Yes, to cultivate our soul. If we are able to learn from all that wide variety of worlds and ideas that we have access to while cultivating our inner self, we can achieve a sense of stability and balance (the motionless being identified with God in the first way). Then, we may get a little closer to immortality. In that state of balance, time is not so important any more.
Reading list
- Marx…. A waste of time after 150 million people were murdered in the name of his “philosophy”
- St Thomas Aquinas, definitely
- D Janelle google him, very interesting
- El Quijote, always a good reading no matter what
- Aristotle YES YES YES
- How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain: The New Science of Transformation by Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman