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old hand
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It may be worth a wander through this book by Robert Levine: A Geography of Time BTW, if history was a fall, then the future should be down and the past up. ;-)
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Carpal Tunnel
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I'm reading Diane Ackerman's An Alchemy of Mind. She quotes various folk at the beginning of each chapter. Her quote for Chapter 13, What Is a Memory, is: Code:
What sort of future is coming up from behind I don't really know. But the past, spread out ahead, dominates everything in sight. --Robert M. Pirsig, [i]Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance[/i]
Last edited by Faldage; 06/25/06 09:44 PM.
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veteran
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Quote:
I'm reading Diane Ackerman's An Alchemy of Mind. She quotes various folk at the beginning of each chapter. Her quote for Chapter 13, What Is a Memory, is:
"What sort of future is coming up from behind I don't really know. But the past, spread out ahead, dominates everything in sight." --Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Great book, but the sentiment expressed by Pirsig above is analogous prose without logical semantical function. Time is progressive. The memory of the event is not the event and that memory occurs in the present and then influences the future.
And while we can construct worthwhile allegorical concepts like "time stood still" and "backwards in time", the essence of "time" is it's "progression" and to use the term otherwise requires the complete obliteration of the meaning of the word and the creation of an altogether new meaning for the term "time".
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Carpal Tunnel
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Quote:
… the essence of "time" is it's "progression" …
Parm my beg to differmints but that "progression" is purely linguistic and is derived from our conception of time. It has nothing to do with time's nature.
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Anyone can tell you what time it is. But who can tell you what is time? (Valéry)
nobody here, that's for sure! (ron obvious)
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Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio. Dixit Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis.
(Quoth Austin: "What is time therefore? If nobody asks it of me, I know what it is; if I wish to explain it to somebody who asks, I don't know.")
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Pooh-Bah
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Margaret Visser in "Beyond Fate" talks about not only our tendancy to use geographic metaphors for time but how that limits or directs our thinking about and definition of time. Metaphors are used to give use a simplified definition or description as a symbol of the real thing. Time is a road that we stand upon with the future before us and the past behind us. The problem is that using a metaphor too much allows us to forget that it is a simplified image not an accurate one. A road for example is a solid, concrete (or tarmac) object that is fixed in place. Whether or not you have travelled on it before it starts at town A and ends at town B and - barring earthquakes and bulldozers - always will. The risk then is to see time as having the same simple nature. The suspicion/feeling/belief that our future is set as firmly as our past. Exploring another cultures concept of time may help us to understand more about the actual rather that resting on our metaphors.
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Quote:the essence of "time" is it's "progression" Parm my beg to differmints but that "progression" is purely linguistic and is derived from our conception of time. It has nothing to do with time's nature
I agree with Faldage The difficulty in any explanation is our individual perception of time. And it's so varied! Myself, I think of time like the air, invisible but all around us. We "see" it in it's effect as we "see" the wind when tree branches move or when things blow about. And sometimes we get a glimpse of the future --- usually when we are not trying --- maybe that's ESP. There! now the cat's among the pigeons!
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to see the future, it to be trapped--
once you see the future, and expect that future to be true, you are forever closing down millions of pathways
the future is like a dandelion head 1000 wisps, chose one, latch onto it, and you follow that path.. all the other wisps, gone with the wind..
but until the moment you chose 1 wisp, 1000 choices are available. (and once you make a choice, its like landing on another dandelion head, 1000 new choice appear.
to know the future, is to be trapped by that path, to lose free will. sages through the ages realized that.
Deidre, a classic celtic tale, starts out with all of Deidre's life being fortold.. the civil wars, the death, the loss, her banishment and punishment.. all told.. and all come to pass. deirdre find freedom in her death.. the one event that has not been fortold.
or read Dune.(same idea, that to know the future is not a blessing, but a trap.)
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that to know the future is not a blessing, but a trap Wow. That's pretty profound. But what if, like in Terminator 2 and some Star Trek episodes, just because you get a glimpse of one particular future, that doesn't mean it IS going to happen; that you do in fact still have choices? Oh, Einstein, where are you now?!
And what if, like I've seen so much of in the Ann Landers/agony aunt type columns about infidelity: don't you think that if it ever became possible for us to decide whether we want to know what our future would be, that, like in the newspaper columns, there'd be some people who would want to know, and some who wouldn't?
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