Time

"Time is on my side. Yes it is." - The Rolling Stones

I recently finally finished Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut and although Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors, I didn't much care for the book.  That being said, I haven't stopped thinking about TIME.  So if the theme of the book has stayed with me for more than a month now, maybe I did like it? Ha. Who knows...

There are a race of beings in the book called Tralfamadorians who can see all of time in the same moment.  They see the future, the past, and the current moment all together but choose to focus on happy/positive moments rather than the sad/hard/destructive moments. All in all....a good sentiment. Focus on the happy times.

The interesting thing is though...this idea...the idea that time exists all at once rather than linearly is not just fiction.  Einstein theorized that time is as real a dimension that exists the same way space does.  THEN (past or future) is as real a thing as HERE or NOW. It can be measured and "navigated to" the same way across the street can be measured as being separate from wherever you're sitting now.  So that's interesting...

I've done a fair amount of reading and watching physicists speak about time in the last month and it's a very interesting concept. If you're at all interested or have any sort of physics-y mindedness to you, i'd recommend you check out some youtube videos by Carlo Rovelli (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6rWqJhDv7M).  In one of his videos, he makes sure to mention that you can't just think of and look at time from a physics standpoint - you have to consider the neurological, psychological, and sociological impacts of it as well.  And that's sort of what i wanted to write about today.  The philosophical and theoretical properties of time.

Both the best and worst thing about physics is that it is agnostic about the practical. It can tell you all about vibrations of particles and how things will act or react, but it doesn't necessarily take into account choice, desire or decisions within the entire system.  It can tell you that when i step, i exert a force, and an opposing force is applied to me. Great. That's important. But at the end of the day...all that happened was i took a step. Haha. My point is this... if time does not exist as a line and always has been and always will be for particles and what not, then that would necessitate a multi verse and infinite realities. Sure...maybe the particles will act one way or another, but did i step this way or that way..? The only way for time to exist eternally is if i stepped BOTH ways.  And my linear human perception of here and now creates the illusion of a singular reality when in fact there are an infinite number.  Cool right?!?

Quantum physics is so physics-y. Everything exists in every state until it is measured.  In this case, the thing doing the measuring is our brains and the what that it's measuring is space time. Weeeee (:

j

p.s Tralfamadorians are tall creatures with eyes on their hands. Kind of like The Pale Man from Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labrynth. Movie is so different when you think that The Pale Man could see all of time and knew what would happen.