Monday, April 02, 2007

.: Time (2) :.

“Time?” You ask, taken aback. “Have we not understood everything about time? Have you not imparted the divine enlightenment to us already? What more is there about time that we have not yet considered?”

Do not, my followers, be limited by the universal handicap that plague all mortals. As ones seeking the true understanding, I expect that all of you not to fall into the common traps that has defeated so many human minds. Yet I see that the most of you are not yet ready to transcend into the state of true wisdom.

My disciples, what I have explained on the last post, was how it was plausible for time not to exist. It is obvious enough that due to the lack of proof that “time” in the form of the human understanding does exist, it is perfectly possible for it to be something entirely different, or something completely inexistent. Yet, is something plausible necessarily correct?

On the other hand, does the mere fact that there is no evidence mean that it is not plausible for time to exist?

When I say visualizing time as a fourth dimension, most mortals with their lesser intellect would be unable to do as I say. Yet, if we were to ignore the width and depth of objects, leaving only length, and look at time as a second dimension, the exercise becomes incredibly simple, in fact so simple that it is familiar to most in the form of a displacement-time graph. The y-axis represents our movements in one dimension of space, while the x-axis represents time.

Take a simple graph, say y=x^2. By looking at any single point, say (0,0) and (1,1), it would be impossible to tell if any other points exists at all, or any movements in any direction. Yet, is it still safe to conclude that thus no other points beyond (1,1) or (0,0) exists? When we look at the entire function, we would see a flowing and continuous graph. Similarly, each instance in time seems broken and separate when we study it individually, but does this mean that time cannot flow continuously?

Looking at the analogy from yet another angle, we can ask a few questions about human life. Is existence a point undergoing translation in the positive x-direction? Or is it a consciousness moving through a set trajectory, with each instance of time merely a cross section of our existence as an object in space-time, and the passage of time not anything more than looking at the cross sections of different parts of the object? If it is the first case, then we must have free will, and the ability to do anything we want. Yet this “translation” must then occur relative to a new “time”, an inexplicable fifth dimension. If it is the second case, then everything destined to be must inevitably happen, for we are all part of the gigantic object in space-time that is the earth, the geometry of which is predetermined. Decisions would not change fate, for decisions are nothing more than parts of fate itself.

Since our lives in relation to time can be illustrated using a graph, is it a function of time? Is it one to one, one to many, or many to one? If it is one to one, then surely there is only one solution to our state of existence at any single point on the x-axis, and there is only one past, one present, and one future which can ever happen. If it is many to one, does it mean that it is possible to revert life experiences to a state exactly the same as that at another separate instant? If it is one to many, then does that mean it is a choice between either of the two solutions? Or does it mean that we are experiencing both states at the same instant?

Rejected instrumentality at 7:22 PM