TIME KEEPS ON SLIPPING... :

Real Time : The pace of living quickens continuously, yet a full understanding of things temporal still eludes us (Gary Stix, August 13, 2002, Scientific American)

The essence of time is an age-old conundrum that preoccupies not just the physicist and philosopher but also the anthropologist who studies non-Western cultures that perceive events as proceeding in a cyclical, nonlinear sequence. Yet for most of us, time is not only real, it is the master of everything we do. We are clock-watchers, whether by nature or training.

The distinct feeling we have of being bookended between a past and a future--or, in a traditional culture, being enmeshed in the Great Mandala of recurring natural rhythms--may be related to a basic biological reality. Our bodies are chock-full of living clocks--ones that govern how we connect a ball with a bat, when we feel sleepy and perhaps when our time is up.

These real biorhythms have now begun to reveal themselves to biologists. Scientists are closing in on areas of the brain that produce the sensation of time flying when we're having fun--the same places that induce the slow-paced torpor of sitting through a monotone lecture on Canadian interest-rate policy. They are also beginning to understand the connections between different kinds of memory and how events are organized and recalled chronologically. Studies of neurological patients with various forms of amnesia, some of whom have lost the ability to judge accurately the passage of hours, months and even entire decades, are helping to pinpoint which areas of the brain are involved in how we experience time.

Recalling where we fit in the order of things determines who we are. So ultimately, it doesn't matter whether time, in cosmological terms, retains an underlying physical truth. If it is a fantasy, it is one we cling to steadfastly. The reverence we hold for the fourth dimension, the complement of the three spatial ones, has much to do with a deep psychic need to embrace meaningful temporal milestones that we can all share: birthdays, Christmas, the Fourth of July. How else to explain the frenzy of celebration in January 2000 for a date that neither marked a highlight of Christ's life nor, by many tallies, the true millennium?

We will, nonetheless, continue to celebrate the next millennium (if we as a species are still around), and in the meantime, we will fete our parents' golden wedding anniversary and the 20th year of the founding of our local volunteer fire department. Doing so is the only way of imposing hierarchy and structure on a world in which instant messaging, one-hour photo, express checkout and same-day delivery threaten to rob us of any sense of permanence.

I know we're all supposed to feel really pressed for time nowadays, but just consider for a moment how many more hours a day our forefathers had to work just to provide food, clothing and shelter for themselves and their families. It's humbling. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 21, 2002 9:04 AM