duszek wrote:We measure time in order to be at a certain place in the future because other people want to be there too and so we can meet them.
To attend a lecture for example.
The present time does not exist because it is either not yet or already gone.
Past time is only relevant as experience stored in our memory which we use to make better plans for the future.
Interesting topic. Timeless, in fact. I’m sure people have been wondering about such speculations since … time began.
I was driving behind a road-maintenance truck the other day. On the back was a sign that read, “Caution! Vehicle constantly stopping.”
Impossible of course. We know what is meant, but not what it “says”.
In English, the present participle allows us to turn almost every verb into an ongoing action: turning, ticking, dripping, saying, sleeping, eating … and stopping. How often do we hear each other say, “I’m only saying”. What we mean, of course, is that we really intended (past tense) to say (future tense) something else by what we actually just said (past completed).
The trouble is that we are often conveniently unaware, as there usually isn’t time to ponder these things too closely, that a lot of actions can only occur instantaneously, not ongoing. We say that a clock is “going” when we can hear that it is ticking. The clock isn’t going anywhere. What we mean, of course, is that we have heard the most recent series of “ticks” in anticipation of the next. Whereas a single tick takes no time at all, it’s really the series of ticks we describe as “ticking”. It’s really the measurable periods of silence between each pair of ticks that we observe.
Likewise, a moving body (such as the council truck) cannot really be “constantly stopping”. In fact, ‘stopping’ is altogether a nonsense word. Like ‘dying’, ‘coming’ and ‘going’. We habitually say things like, “I think the bus is stopping.” We don’t even realise that what we really mean is that the bus is slowing down, in anticipation of coming to a halt. To stop is obviously an instantaneous event (only observed when completed), that cannot be maintained for any measurable length of time. When we say the patient is dying, we mean that the dimensionless moment of death is imminent. To die takes no time at all. Real intense suffering, on the other hand, no matter how brief, always seems to take for ever. Like waiting (ongoing) for the kettle to boil (past continuous).
This is how we have become socially and culturally accustomed to use language to create all such absurd, time-bound illusions. To which, incidentally, we have all become rather fiercely attached. And that, in particular, includes this beguiling notion of “the passage of time”.