Tag Archives: time

ChatGPT blog analysis: Time

Posted on by

This is the latest in what is shaping up to be a series of analyses of my blog posts by ChatGPT. Some bonus links in the comment below. 

ChatGPT: I’ve been through your 44 posts tagged TIME, and I have to say: this collection feels like a personal meditation-in-slow-motion. Where memory had you circling the persistence of self, and awareness leaned toward the immediacy of being, your reflections on time are more like a spiral — looping between philosophy, science, novels, and your own lived texture. Let me walk you through the main threads I see.

Continue reading →

Hope

Posted on by

Time is an illusion. A concept. There is only “now.” Memories happen in the now… the future can only be imagined in the now. A common view in Eastern spiritual traditions, philosophy, and science. Anxious and worried thoughts are usually about a future that exists only in the mind. So here’s my question…

What about hope? The hope we experience in the now is inherently future-based. If we’re hoping for a different/better future, are we missing the now? I put the question to ChatGPT: Continue reading →

Two of my favorite “-isms”

Posted on by

Anyone who knows me knows of my interest in consciousness and reality (see tags below for more). When it comes to understanding reality, I’m gonna go with one of the following. (or some combination.)

Monism is the view that all reality is fundamentally one substance or principle. Everything in the universe is ultimately the same kind of thing. This can be physical (everything is matter) or mental (everything is mind), or something else entirely.

Panpsychism, on the other hand, is the idea that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the universe. According to panpsychism, all things have some form of consciousness or experience, even if it’s very basic, down to the smallest particles.

So, while both can be viewed as “unifying” theories, monism is about the nature of reality being one substance, whereas panpsychism is about consciousness being fundamental and present everywhere.

The Order of Time

Posted on by

“The entire evolution of science would suggest that the best grammar for thinking about the world is that of change, not of permanence. Not of being, but becoming. He says, “The difference between things and events is that things persist in time; events have limited duration.” He gives a rock as an example of a thing, as contrasted with an event. But, he says, “On closer inspection, in fact, even the things that are most ‘thinglike’ are nothing more than long events.” A rock isn’t a rock forever — even though it might seem like that to us humans. It starts off as a bunch of sand, gets compressed and melted, exists as a rock for a while, and eventually wears away into sand again. Even to say it started off as sand is wrong, because the sand wasn’t always sand either. The molecules that make up each grain of sand have their own complicated history. Therefore, any given rock’s existence as a rock is an event within the long, long history of its constituent, parts.”

— The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli (quoted in The Other Side of Nothing by Brad Warner)

Emptiness

Posted on by

“Pike was good at waiting, which was why he excelled in the Marines and other things. He could wait for days without moving and without being bored because he did not believe in time. Time was what filled your moments, so if your moments were empty, time had no meaning. Emptiness did not flow or pass; it simply was. Letting himself be empty was like
putting himself in neutral: Pike was.”

— The Last Detective (Robert Crais)

Time: Do past, present and future exist all at once?

Posted on by


Near the end of the video there’s a reference to presentism and eternalism.

“Philosophical presentism is the view that neither the future nor the past exists. In some versions of presentism, the view is extended to timeless objects or ideas (such as numbers). According to presentism, events and entities that are wholly past or wholly future do not exist at all. Presentism contrasts with eternalism and the growing block theory of time, which hold that past events, like the Battle of Manzikert, and past entities, like Alexander the Great’s warhorse Bucephalus, really exist although not in the present. Eternalism extends to future events as well.” (Wikipedia)

Most of my reading (and many hours of meditation) makes me lean toward presentism. It’s always now. But –as suggested in the video– physicists insist the math argues for eternalism. And I’d kind of like for that to be “true” as well. Perhaps both can be true, depending on what time it is.

Giving up on time

Posted on by

“He was used to the disappearance of large parts of his life. Sometimes, he passed out at ten o’clock in the morning, and when he woke up, it was nine o’clock in the morning — some other morning. At first, the time changes were disorienting, but over the course of a couple of years, he got used to it. He simply gave up on time — now life was daytime and nighttime, strung along like beads on a string, and the minute, hour, and date were irrelevant.”

— Wicked Prey (John Sandford)