Dear Jen: How do you feel knowing that "time" might not actually exist, fundamentally, at a physics level?
This month's question is one of my favorite things to talk about when I am inebriated/want to sound intellectual, but just end up sounding obnoxiously drunk: time.
This month's question for "Thursday Letters with Jen" is one of my favorite things to talk about when I am inebriated/want to sound intellectual, but just end up sounding obnoxiously drunk.
We're going to talk about time.
"How do you feel knowing that "time" might not actually exist, fundamentally, at a physics level see...this article, this book summary (narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch), this YouTube video and this other YouTube video."
— Shaun Spalding.
Dear Shaun Spalding,
Thank you for your question. This is literally my favorite thing to talk about after a few drinks. It's come to the point that my partner has a standard facial expression after my third drink that basically reads, "This crazy bitch is about to talk about time, isn't she?"
Well, you're right babe! Except I'm sober this time and someone actually asked me.
Shaun, I did refer to the articles/videos you sent and conducted some additional research. Amid my journey of learning more about "time," I found this incredible article from The Scientific American. Like the idea of time itself, the writing is illuminating, lyrical, elegant, and complex. I can't claim 100% comprehension of everything I read and watched, but here is my best summary of why "time" (as we believe it to be) does not exist:
Scientists do not believe in the idea that time "flows" or has a directional arrow, rather it is a "block."
The reason why there is no "passage of time" is because the idea of "past," "present," and "future" are fixed entities where no single moment is superior. In a "time block," every moment is special and hence all moments compose one entity of "time." Therefore, the "time block" does not move.
To add additional complexity, the notion of "past," "present," and "future," imply that we all are experiencing moments universally. That cannot be true. Things that supposedly happen at the same time actually occur at different moments relative to who/where you are. My "right now" may be the "past" from your vantage point, hence the theory of relativity.
What we perceive as "time" is an observation that what happened "before" is different from what is happening "now" and potentially different in the so-called "future." This doesn't mean that "time" has a direction per se, rather that memory has a direction.
The reason why "now," "present," "future" and other related concepts are in quotation marks is because the aforementioned concepts may not be "real."
"When" "you" "put" "things" "in" "quotation" "marks" "we" "must" "question" "the" "validity" "of" "said" "things" "as" "real" "because" "what" "even" "is" language" "and" "real" "anyways," "yeah?"
Are you lost? I get it, it's probably because we are all sober on this Thursday morning trying to figure out what "time" is. Like you, I wish I were at Blackbird Bar off of Market Street in San Francisco, on the verge of throwing up between two parked vehicles on my 27th "time is real" birthday trying to explain all of this to you. Instead, here is my shitty attempt to do so visually:
That said, your question was not about whether time is real or not. I would never pick a fight with a physicist. They truly scare me. Your question is how I feel about it.
Well, even if time doesn't exist from a physics standpoint, on a humanistic level, does it really matter? In the absence of "time" as a concept, we have created time as a construct, which I experience deeply on an hourly, daily, and yearly basis. It's in the way my body aches, the physical lines of aging in my parents, the changing seasons, the annual hope-turned-doom cycle of being a Houston Rockets fan. Even if "time" is not real, what we have created linguistically and systematically in its absence is an insidious part of our human experience.
Everything – when I wake up, when I have meetings, when I go to sleep – are all driven by human-created markers of time. My schedule is often a violent affront to my circadian rhythm. One of my favorite things about extended stretches away from work and home is following the inclinations of my body, which tends to want to nap after lunch, write between the hours of 2-5 PM, and laze into the late evening. Instead, the realities of so-called modern life mean that I look at the clock constantly and am forced to consume the most depressing byproduct of our post-Industrial Revolution fixation on time: the sad sandwich. If you don't believe how much I hate sandwiches, here are nearly 1,000 words of old and bad writing on it. Sandwich aside aside, I often wonder what time it is, how much time I have left, why I have wasted it, am I making the best use of it, etc. Thus, even if "time" is not "real," the system of time we have created has actual implications.
Like most human systems, time is privy to inequity, impacting people in different ways. This is the most interesting thing about our notion of time – it's lack of neutrality. Recently, I have read some incredible books by transwomen authors. I strongly believe that some of the most interesting, boundary shifting, and beautiful writing has been composed by transwomen writers like Casey Plett, Cecilia Gentili, Kai Cheng Thom, and Meredith Talusan. Their works are diverse, but universally queer my idea of human-constructed time: the implication of incised childhoods, the psychological impact of shortened lives, meditations on how to measure life beyond the gendered and heteronormative markers of life. On the other side of the spectrum, we have billionaires like Jeff Bezos who are heavily investing in in eternal life technologies to extend the pleasures they are experiencing "now." Here are 2 groups of people all subject to the same construct of time, yet experiencing it in dramatically different ways.
Statistically, "time scarcity" – less time with family, lower life expectancies, more minutes spent commuting, fewer sessions with doctors, etc. – disproportionately impacts poor people, rural folks, people of color, women, the working class, single parent households, immigrants, and more. Basically, everyone except Jeff Bezos and maybe my 80-pound dog Spice is subject to the injustices of "time" not "well spent." Time may simply be a fixed block with no direction, but our systems of time are tiered, impacting people based on the privileges they hold.
All that said Shaun, I actually feel (here's your answer!) hopeful about "time" not being real. If we don't believe in "time," does this mean we can eradicate ourselves from the flawed, punishing systems of measuring it? If the physicists can win the "time is not real" narrative war, there are incredible impacts for all of us. This is where the concept of time and the construct of time converge. Here's my favorite passage from The Scientific American:
And what if science were able to explain away the flow of time? Perhaps we would no longer fret about the future or grieve for the past. Worries about death might become as irrelevant as worries about birth. Expectation and nostalgia might cease to be part of human vocabulary. Above all, the sense of urgency that attaches to so much of human activity might evaporate. No longer would we be slaves to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's entreaty to “act, act in the living present,” for the past, present and future would literally be things of the past.
Shaun, thank you for your "time" and question. Even if it is not real, the minutes you spent submitting a question and reading this response mean a lot to me. This is the part of my time soliloquy when I drunkenly sing this little ditty.
Best,
Jen
See you on the first Thursday of next month. Interested in submitting a question? Submit here! Please, no more anxiety-laden questions about the upcoming election. I feel you and I promise that I will answer those next.
“"When" "you" "put" "things" "in" "quotation" "marks" "we" "must" "question" "the" "validity" "of" "said" "things" "as" "real" "because" "what" "even" "is" language" "and" "real" "anyways," "yeah?"”
🤣😂😝 loved this Jen!! Thanks for sharing with us!