I Pit Time

The BBQ Pit
1

I Pit Time.

Why?

I Pit Time because it fools people and makes them believe it means something more than a centimeter-scale on a ruler.

Time, you are nothing but a convenience, an abstract tool, and it is time someone put you in your place.

Time, you don’t exist. You aren’t even a concept. We use you, because we want to compare the movement of objects relative to one another. It is this movement we measure, and we use you as a vulgar little scale. Whenever we need you, we pick a steady rhythm from nature or create one of our own, a fixed pace, and use it as a metronome against which we measure the (other) notes of existence.

If we so desire. Because without the metronome – in other words, without you, oh Time, life goes on just the same.

And yet, like the Emperor’s new clothes, you manage to obscure movement, because you’ve convinced people that they want to see you.

Time, I pity your victims, and I pit you.

You pompous, self-aggrandizing piece of shit. May the day come soon that people see you for what you really are. May the day come soon that people will again say things like "My, dear Emperor, I like the new look! And by the way, are you a grower or … "

Until that day comes, I will make sure people will see you for the humble convenience that you really are, wherever and whenever I can.

A.

2

ummm…okay.

3

It’s one thing to say that a rainbow is an optical illusion, and another to say that rainbows don’t exist. There clearly is some notional axis along which different configurations of the universe can be placed. Do length, breadth and depth not exist either?

4

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

I like your rant, it has a quality I can’t quite put my finger on (a timeless quality?) but as SentientMeat says time exists at least in some form.

Now, if you’re pitting the measurement of time, and the random meaning attached to arbitary periods in that measurement system then yeah, I get the point and I agree.

If you’re pitting the passage of time, the crumbling of ancient monuments, the wrinkling of young skin, and the cooling of my coffee then I get that too.

Just pitting ‘time’ as a non-existant entity. That’s a bit odd.

SD

For instance, as I submit this, it’s almost lunchtime.

5

I wanted to read this rant, but that would take time, which doesn’t exist. Damn you, Arwin!

6

If you’re going to rant against nonexistant conceptual entities created by man for lack of any better ideas, I recommend starting with money. That one’s waaaaaaay more fucked up.

7

No, Roland, they’re the same thing. You know, “Time is money”.

8

Length, breadth, depth and movement. It’s usually when we substitute movement for time that the trouble begins and we get stuff like time travelling backwards, time bending, and so on. Time doesn’t measure any of these four, but it quantifies the last, movement, in terms of speed.

Think of an object in a void. This object has dimensions, but we cannot see how big it is because there is nothing to compare it to. We’d need to be able to put a ruler next to it. We do know that it has dimensions, however, because it is composed of mass that extends in multiple dimensions. We cannot see how far away from us it is because there is nothing to compare it to. We cannot see if it moves because there is nothing it can move to or from.

Now consider two objects, rotating each other. We can see how big the objects are relative to each other. We can see if they move closer or farther, relative to each other. We can see that they move, because they move relative to each other.

But where does time come in, in the two object (very abstract) picture? It doesn’t. We can’t measure the movement itself, because we need secondary movement to compare it to. What we then compare, is movement relative to other movement. That allows us to say something about the speed of movement, of one pair of objects relative to the other pair.

You’ve said it yourself. Notional axis. In other words, a ruler, measuring movement against a (man-)defined regular other movement (currently the atomic clock being the most popular one).

But my point is that people forget what it really means. They no longer realise that when they say “Time’s change,” they literally mean “The world moves on.”

Spacedog, I think you pretty much got the gist of my rant. :wink:

A nice exercise would be to translate all the uses of time for a while. For instance, you used almost lunchtime. Instead you could say you have a recurring pattern where you prioritise food consumption over other activities such as work, and one such transition phase is coming up. (I’m sure some people can do better than me)

Or Fear Itself could say (who is obviously lying so he doesn’t hurt my feelings), I wanted to read this rant, but I have a number of actions to perform that I prioritise over reading some stupid rant in the pit.

9

Well, that explains why wasting time doesn’t seem to increase my money supply.

10

They are a very similar level of concept. What time is for movement, is money for matter. Money expresses the relative value we humans express of matter against other matter.

11

Yes, that or… “lunchtime”. One of these seems much more convenient than the other.

Time is really no different from length. Length is merely a way of comparing somethings size with something else. Without something to compare it to it is meaningless, same goes for time.

12

Time is on my side. Yes it is.

13

The speed of my movement is greater than yours? The energy supply for your movement is smaller than mine?

1920s Style “Death Ray”, exactly. And of course, we order and plan our movements. And a uniform, consistent movement is a very useful tool to help us order and plan our movements. It’s just that the usefulness of this tool has gotten to the Tools head.

14

Late to work again this morning, I take it…

15

I was thinking maybe he had a term paper due.

16

What bothers me most about time is that it keeps on slipping. Often into the future, of all places.

17

Ummmm. Did they just install internet access at the cafes in Amsterdam? :wink: Off on a day trip from Almere? Smoke a good one for me, Arwin! You rock!

18

Well that’s a large part of the problem. It began on the same conceptual level, but has mutated into a multileveled entity that exists on at least three planes of (non-) existence. The relative value of money to any given set of matter disappeared long ago (and no, I’m not talking about the end of the gold standard, though that is an example of the further abstraction of the concept). What we’re left with now is an ethereal blob of shit for which certain elements are defined, but for which those elements do not form any corporeal whole, an internally consistent abstraction, or even a coherent outline of the original idea.

By the way, Arwin, all jokes aside, it’s nice to see another poster refer to varying levels of abstraction. I have been unable to verbalize the concept past the idea of a word being a first-level abstraction of a physical object, and an image being either a second- or third-level abstraction, depending on what element of the consciousness generated it (metaconscious images being second-level abstractions, conscious or subconscious “images” being third-level). If you have any ideas on a possible structure of real-world examples, please drop me an email; I’d love to discuss it with you. It’d be very helpful to try to communicate my image of human belief-structure spectra, if I ever actually finish constructing the damn thing. My email’s in my profile.

19

Yeah, but who can say where the road goes, where the day flows? Only time…

20

Late for his girlfriend’s date?