It seems like in a lot of the stories we've read, the main character has been placed in a position from which they experience time much differently than how we do in our everyday lives. I'm not necessarily talking about time travel either. For example:
In Hellfire the cyborgs assume a very detached view of history. They are so far ahead of many of the times they are investigated, everything and everyone assumes a role as some sort of primary or secondary document for investigation. It begs the question, can anyone be anything more than a "cyborg" who merely records and processes information when viewing a point in time that exists beyond their own? At what point in history does someone else's life become just "history", and our capacity to truly empathize with them become deficient?
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate, and Against the Current offered what I found to more proscriptive than descriptive views of time. As in, how should we move on in the face of an uncertain future, or past? How should we view time in a way that we can move on past the mistakes we've made, and not become too attached to the successes we've enjoyed?
Finally, other stories like the Sledge-maker's Daughter gave me a reverse of the Hellfire story in terms of how it made me look a time. Instead of becoming a detached observer, it made me wonder to what extent are we mythicizing and aggrandizing a past or future that we are only vaguely familiar with. To what extent is this okay, and at what point do we need to take a step back and observe with a fresh outlook the historical evidence present to us.
I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, I'm just putting this out in the ether. Peace.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
time confuses me. it seems like we ought to be able to realize that we're 4-d objects, and that free will is an absurd idea. is that sound? has anyone read flatland?
ReplyDeleteHaven't read flatland, but I think I see what you're saying. Free will, in a lot of aspects is a nice idea used to soothe our egos. Either we have it or we don't, and if we don't, we don't know! So why worry!
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, to something from the forth dimension we'd probably look pretty silly. The best example I can remember is that of an ant (us in the third dimension) crawling along a line drawn across a piece of a paper. The paper, however, is coiled so that it folds in on itself. From our perspective as the ant, it looks like we're just going straight, when in reality the path we're on is curving greatly.
Damn, time confuses me too.
I think time is overly dramatized and thus why it is so confusing. Something cannot exist in solely the fourth dimension since I believe dimensions are just as overly dramatized. For example, there is no such thing as the first or second dimension. They cannot exist, we can only represent them.
ReplyDeleteBasically, the dimensions were created solely for our benefit to explain what we see because as humans we strive to explain and understand how everything works. I believe time is no different. Because time has always existed and will never not exist.
But, I thought I had it somewhat figured out to the extent to be satisfied and now I cant really string it all together again.
Damn, time confuses me too too.
The ant example reminds me of an example used in The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. It is a good book that steps through general relativity and quantum mechanics on its way to describe string theory in layman’s terms.
ReplyDelete