Close Encounters of the 4th Dimension

It governs our lives. We are given a time to be born (although sometimes off) and we are given a time to die. Of course the former is an estimate, but I’m sure you are following. We have the time of our lives. A time to have fun. A time to be irresponsible. A time to grow up. A time to settle down. A time to find that special someone. And even a time to procreate and start the cycle from the beginning.

As you will no doubt find, time fascinates me. Nothing controls our actions as a species and as an individual much like time. There is never a second when you aren’t aware of time passing. Time is the first dimension in which our collective power has no control over. We interact in three dimensions and yet live in four. The fourth, to our perception, travels in one direction, at a constant pace. We can not speed it up, nor slow it down. We can’t stop it, nor make it go in reverse. We obsess on it, as we should, for we only have a limited amount in which to achieve all we think we are capable of. We can’t even imagine what an existence out side of time will be like. It has shaped our views more than we can fathom.

But what if we are wrong? What if time does not exist?

Already, you can feel the reaction boiling up inside of your head, as your inner monologue starts to shout that time has to exist. For surely if it did not exist, then we would not age, grow old and die. The first reaction is to laugh. Such an absurd statement. Clearly here is a mad man – devoid of all logical reasoning. Already, my first point has been proven. Time has altered your thoughts. But entertain mine for a second.

Humans evolved to better cope with external stimuli. Our eyes are facing forward to better see the prey we hunt. Our ears are on the side to make up for lack of superior peripheral vision. Our concept of time to aid in our survivability. As Douglas Adams has said (and this is paraphrased): if we ever saw our place in the universe, our heads would explode. In other words: the human psyche can not deal with the scale of the universe. We can never truly comprehend exactly how tiny we really are. We have to have some form of self importance in order to be sane. Now how does this relate to time? And how does this prove time does not exist? Well for starters, the ability to predict changes on the earth during certain time of year allowed us to survive and gave us a form of control over time. We can say tomorrow comes after today, and be right, and therefor, important.

So maybe time does exist, but our concept of it is skewered? Who knows? I am mearly one man trying to make sense of this world and the collective creature we call humanity.