Monday, November 14, 2005

Time Is The Erosion Of False Truths (what?!!?)

Due to some Dean's World traffic shuttling in today (thanks), I wanted to drop something a little more "philosophical." And this post I read at PinkLemonade Diva, reminded me of a notion I bandied about at the beginning of this year.

time is the erosion of false truths

the idea is that time doesn't pass via seconds, minutes, and days - it passes via our experience and perception. when we learn something new, or learn that something we believed to be true is false, and our perspective subsequently evolves in some way, then, and only then, have we gotten older.
my basic example to illustrate this was to say, if you have a guy who lives in the same apartment, same town, same city, doing the same routine every day for a year, he probably isn't as "old" as the guy who goes to some foreign land and experiences a new culture for a week or two.

Now I know the statement itself, as currently formulated, doesn't really hold up to true philosophical scrutiny. And I also know that in sixty years, while I will still have not turned thirty, I will surely have many demonstrable signs of aging. Even if all I do is sit behind a laptop the whole time.

But I think there's something there worth exploring.

Maybe aging wouldn't suck so much if it was tied to our individual experiences, and not just a constant countdown to Absolute Zero.

Maybe this is why so many of us feel like we are still children stuck in adult bodies. Because our current time/aging relationship doesn't correlate to our individual experience.

Maybe if we can look at time as a subjective experience, instead of an objective truth, we would be one step closer to controlling it ...

anyways, I'd love to talk more about the future of time, but right now time is still just ticking away, and time is also money, so the time has come for this post to end
.

6 comments:

  1. Maybe the accumulation of lies is what ages us. As we get older we convince ourselves of more and more things that just aren't true, until we collapse under their weight.

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  2. I like aging, because I find the older I get the better I get.
    Ten years ago, I was awful, right now I'm bearable, so I'm really looking forward to 39, because if things keep going the way they are, I will be too awesome for words.
    Although once I hit 40 it may be an entirely different story.

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  3. so that's where all this traffic is coming from, she says too lazy to key in the italics.

    I like the way you bandy about your philosophicality better. :) I was so whiny in that post


    Oh, and keep sitting behind that laptop. If you sit with it on the lap, your kids might have three heads.

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  4. nice one,
    did you steal that from my thoughts?

    Fess up.

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  5. Anonymous11/14/2005

    I do NOT like aging one FCKING BIT!

    When I was 30ish I thought that when I hit 40, i'd just accept any wrinkles on my face as the passage of time, the years of wisdom, blah blah blah. Fact of the matter is, now that i'm THERE, I don't consider one single wrinkle beautiful at all.
    I Dont Like It. I'm not vain, I just don't like it.
    On the othe rhand, I don't want to look like I did in my 20's. I just don't want to look OLD.
    Be very afraid. it's going to happen to you.

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  6. Anonymous11/14/2005

    Going to foreign lands makes you old?!
    I think the constant change of perspective is what you keeps you young and not hardened into one mode of thinking!

    ReplyDelete

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