What if the concept of "time" didn't exist?

Introduction

Time is a myth - a concept or reality that has been clearly fabricated. This is a thought that has screwed up my head for a few years now. This article is about imagining a world in which dates and hours, clocks, and time zones did not exist. It also works on a fundamental belief or thesis that I have come to believe - the world would have been a better place and we would be far more happy if time never existed.

What if there was no yesterday to ruminate about, what if there was tomorrow to fear, what if there was only today and we lived always in the moment? What if there were no plans to achieve, targets to meet, schedules to adapt, agendas to check, and perhaps no goals to aspire to?

I give myself the literary liberty or freedom to re-think how things would be, and how the society would be like.

History of Time

Planet Earth - 4.5 billion years ago

Homo Sapiens - 200,000 years ago

Sumerians developed the sexagesimal system - 5000 years ago

Lunar clocks and sundials developed by ancient civilizations - 2500-3000 years ago

Mechanical clocks developed in Europe - 1200 years ago

So, the concept of time as we know it - hours, days, months, years, yesterday, today, and tomorrow came up in its current form not more than 1500-2000 years ago, which is less than 10% of our species' existence on this planet. In fact, except for us as a species, none of the known living species have any concept of time.

Some of the earliest reflections were by some of the Green philosophers, where many of them debated this at length - is time an illusion? is time infinite? Aristotle couldn't come to terms with the concept and questioned the reality of the present moment and the relation of time with motion. For Plato, time was more a cosmological phenomenon and linked to motions of celestial bodies, and hence cyclical.

Plato's view is shared in the even older Hindu scriptures - where time is cyclical through cycles of creation, preservation, and destruction. There are also concepts of time being linked to consciousnesses and one's ability to manipulate the perception of time. Karma is a well-known linear consequential impact of time, and there are concepts around time dilation as well.

, The "years" mentioned above is in itself a misnomer because such a unit of measure will not exist if time doesn't exist in the first place.

Modern Perspective of Time

With the theory of relativity first published by Albert Einstein, and subsequent explosion in the research around the same, the entire concept of space-time came into existence. According to the current scientific viewpoint, time is one of the dimensions of the universe, and is just another form of space. That is one very difficult frame of view to imagine for us not traveling close to the speed of light and weak gravitational fields daily. However, spacetime is a singular concept, which is quite contradictory to our "perception" of time as it is.

Perception of Time

There are no plants or flowers that sleep according to an arbitrarily set time on their internal clocks. The animal kingdom doesn't look up to a mechanical clock to go hunt and have dinner. Except for us as a species, most of the activities that take place in the wider biodiversity are a function of a variety of internal and external stimuli that are driven primarily by nature. Of course with the advent of the encroaching homo-sapiens, the biodiversity also has had to adapt far more to our concept of time over the past few hundred years.

I used to have a few pets, both dogs and cats. Even though it was for obvious reasons, I didn't see them sleeping only at night, or being hungry only in the evening or morning. Beyond the basic sleep and food, the pets never seemed to differentiate between what happened 5 minutes ago and now. Of course, we as a species have conditioned them beyond any possible measure to make them adjust to our needs and convenience. No doubt there is also an impact of past trauma that does exist and gets triggered when a similar incident happens. But, I haven't seen most of the pets (except for extreme trauma) upset because I didn't pet them or took them for a walk "yesterday", or that I will not be available to play with them because of a work trip "tomorrow".

Isn't that wonderful? Isn't the nature just living in the moment? Why are we fretting so much then?

Societal Impact of "Time" as we know it

If there is one thing that the concept of time affects the most is how we function as a society. Everything we do is related to time - goals & targets at work, the so-called growth rate - without the denominator of time the "rate" would have never existed, how we perceive to be better than others - "he/she is a billionaire at 35", and the plethora of Fortune 30 under 30, 40 under 40 and so on. With saying that "old is gold", and "young is beautiful", and the obsession around the years of experience, to retirement age and cut-off ages for a variety of professions. The list goes on and on and on.

Beyond what happens at a societal level, the impact of time on one's physical and mental health is phenomenal. Rumination of one's past, slipping into all kinds of mental health issues such as depression, getting anxiety attacks due to something that might not go one's way into the future, holding oneself back due to the fear of acceptance in the present and the future, the list unfortunately here too goes on.

One of the biggest negative impacts of time is when it comes to the concept of "growth", especially when it comes to the capitalistic view of the financial markets. Everything is now measured as a function of time in the denominator, with the winner who takes it all being the one with the maximum numerator in the least amount of time. Everything from the share prices to interest rates, targets on all kinds of financial metrics/ratios - all is time dependent.

Hence, that leads me to an intermediate hypothesis that the perception of time as we have built over the past several hundred years is not at all optimum it is evil at best.

What if Time wasn't there?

It is very difficult to fathom a reality where the concept of time as we know it doesn't exist, thereby making this section the most challenging to write. Irrespective of all that, things will turn out for the better. We will value the now more often, live in the moment, and focus on what truly matters right now, and not what happened yesterday or might happen tomorrow.

We will most likely become more energy efficient - and use the resources that are available today, without exploiting them way too much in the future. There will always be the concept of the "future", but very different what what we know today. There will be future generations, and we will know that our kids will also "grow" up. Death is anyway inevitable, and that doesn't change either. We will become much more mindful of what we do with our current resources - and perhaps the "waste" that we generate in the form of storage or inventory will be minimized.

There will be far more of an equilibrium in not only how we live, but also how we would co-exist with the nature and biodiversity around us. A lot can be also learned from the ways of living of some of the nomadic tribes - the learnings are passed through generations, and that is what becomes the norm or the culture. It is not that we shall not be able to break the norms it might become much easier as there is no concept anymore of "future" consequences, which is again a construct of our current concept of time.

We will be most likely far more at peace with ourselves and with each other.

Living in the Now

One of the most sought-after goals of many today is to become more aware and become more in sync with the present. Meditation also teaches that to a large extent, lets us be more "present". Those who do practice this are certainly more happy, content, calm, composed, content, and more than anything else very powerful. They rule the time and not let the past or the future affect them in the present, their perception of time is different, although not as extreme as no concept of time.

All these human constructs, including time, should be rather used to empower us and make our lives on this planet happier, wholesome, and in harmony with each other and nature. Rather than that, this concept gets used against you in all forms and shapes and is far from the above utopian state. Even if we don't move to a complete "lack" of time concept, we could re-look at this from the above perspective. Not to treat time as a given, not to fall prey to the fallacy of "time is everything" & "time goes on", but rather use our imagination and the gift of consciousness to perceive time differently than what we do today.

Is there a Future without "Time"?

There is a lot we need to learn from the perspective of physics - time travel, time dilation, bending space-time - all of these are real concepts and proven at a certain scale. The universe is extremely vast, and we are not even getting started with what it has to offer. There are different dimensions to be achieved through both a higher degree of consciousness and meditation or by achieving the states using psychedelics, the concept of time is definitely up for grabs.

Philosophy also has an important role to play, which for all practical reasons doesn't question the concept as much as the Greeks did back in the day. There should definitely be more debate, and perhaps deliberation on how the society would look when we get grey hair and our kids have kids, and there is no time - it is all now!

Until then, I continue to play with the concept, and try to live life as if there was no past (no regrets), and there is no future (not afraid of failure)! :)