But when things quieten down, it becomes apparent. Mind you there are times when I forget, like when I get up late, and I'm firing the kids out the door to school. However, I've explored this at length, and I'm in no doubt about its unreality. We see the effects of something we have labelled “time” and state with assurance that it's real. Time can be helpful, allowing us to arrange our affairs, plan meetings, go on holiday, celebrate events like birthdays and such, but we've become slaves to it. Like a ruler or other measuring device, the clock and calendar are tools to gauge our position relative to other things and each other. Time seems more like a tool to me, one that we should use to get things done in the relative world and be willing to put back on the shelf when we're finished with it. For me, it's merely a concept, one that has been afforded far too much relevance in modern life. It's like a square peg round hole kind of thing. I think it's a dumb idea and it doesn't fit for me. Society has taught us the idea that we live along some invisible line from birth to death and that it holds some invaluable currency that we must spend wisely. Regardless, time is sold to us as a precious commodity, something real and tangible. Some scientists such as quantum gravitational researcher Carlo Rovelli and physicist Julian Barbour seem to believe that time is not real and should be removed from the equations of physics so that we can move forward with a unified theory. And so, as Whitehead cautioned, we must be wary that our concepts of reality are not substituted for reality itself. Time changes and shifts depending on both our physical and psychological state and we influence those states, therefore, we create time. Like a ruler or a weighing scale, clocks offer us merely a symbol of reality, not reality itself. Instead, time is a function of our relationship with the physical world and although we might rely on it in our everyday lives, it does not exist outside us. It has no independent reality outside my perception. Notwithstanding this, the truth remains unchanged for me time, as an objective container for the universe does not exist. My thoughts on matters of life, work, existence, time, space and reality haven't changed much fundamentally, only today I would probably write about them slightly differently. However, it has its place and it was a decent effort for the time and place I found myself.
When I read it now, it seems poorly written and almost naive. It received a lot of attention and with almost 200 comments, it is the most popular piece of content on this site. I originally wrote the “Does Time Exist” article on a site called Wokenmind round about 2013.
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