The illusion of time

One of the most important essays I've written, probing deeper than usual into the subject of our origin and the fundamental nature of reality.

Our instinctive understanding of time is fundamentally wrong. There is no way to talk about this without sounding contradictory at times, but that comes with the territory of talking about metaphysics. Linguistic reduction of reality produces paradoxes. In fact, this essay was first conceived when I wrestling with my own confusion on this topic.

Consider the oddly true proposition that the past comes after the present. Imagine you’re looking at someone's brain under a brain scanner, and you see a brain “experiencing” the present moment. This now-passing experience, in the form of its neural correlate, will sort of trail along after the fact.

Consider the following illustration:

There’s a genuine sense in which the past comes afterwards. Consulting your own mind, actually ask yourself: does your own experience of the past come before or afterwards? The fact that you can answer either way without it being contradictory speaks to the inadequacy of language. This is more than just a frivolous play on words; it is the starting point of a broader discussion.

We can tackle this paradox by illustrating the present moment as the always future-most state. Below is an illustration roughly depicting this. (Take particular note of where t = 0 is)

With this new illustration, we need not confuse ourselves with a distinction between before and after, because there is only one “direction” time can take here. The past fades behind us. It is always prior. Before and after are synonymous in this context because they both denote the same part of the graph—namely, everything which is not t = 0.

The present isn’t pinging from a past state to the new present state. It is always the newest, most recent, real-time, up-to-date and truly live moment. It is never for one moment in a transition from a fossilised past-state to the real-time present. It is always the newest moment. It is always at t = 0, not pinging forward in n+1 increments.

With this, we can also account for the fact that, in the alleged transition from one physical state to the next state, this is not accompanied by an interlude of unawareness between those two states. There isn’t a fundamental divorce between one state and the next. Consciousness over time has a continuous, uninterrupted span. It is not a timeline punctuated with intermittent voids.

Furthermore, memory is not duplicating the present experience, with the present experience jettisoning itself off into this ulterior faculty after the new present state arrives, but rather remains wholly continuous with the present—hence we can see the blur of motion.

As I said elsewhere:

Memory is something that is already known, not something which is added after it has already been experienced.¹

Zeno’s motion paradox is a closely related problem which we must pay attention to. Solving it provides answers to the problem being discussed in this essay.

Zeno’s motion paradox implies a number of things which are not always made explicit. One lesser-known implication is this: if you keep reducing the distances between two points, eventually you are reduced to a junction between two points where the distance is such an indivisible minimum that there is no further route of transition within that distance. In that case, to explain motion, it must be brutely asserted that there is a kind of teleportation between those two points. It just pops from the former position to the next. Moreover, each individual frame of progression is itself completely static and paused, as no motion can happen within an individual frame. Weirdly, the world’s course is then reducible into units of these static frames, none of which contains the property of motion, but out of which, when combined together, there somehow arises motion.

This brute assertion has to be made, because the alternative implication is even more repellant.² The alternative implication is that the path of motion is infinitely divisible, which would mean that motion has infinite transitionary distances prior to its arrival at a future state. In other words, it would always be behind, i.e. in the past.³

Neither of these conclusions makes sense, and so we must consider instead that there is an error in our very manner of thinking, for it was our thoughts which produced this problem, not the world which goes on operating with almost mocking indifference to such paradoxes.

This is where I invite the reader to once again look at the second illustration:

The thing that we allege is moving from state to state, position to position, is actually in a constant present, merely enduring as its self-same self throughout a background of change. It is always ahead. It is never a fossilised previous state. It does not need to cross an intermediate stage between a past state to a next state. Therefore, it does not fall into Zeno’s paradox.

t = 0 is the very principle of duration itself. It is the thing which, so to speak, is durating. Our sense of time is us enduring through change, not the change itself.

Now let us modify the illustration so it is a straight-forward depiction of an object in motion. The exact same principle applies, but now we’re focusing on space rather than time. Again, take particular note of where position 0 is. (Ignore the y-axis variation, which is purely to indicate that this is a ballistic motion).

The basis of its apparent motion is its self-remaining position in spite of being subjected to a context of change. When a ball is kicked, instead of disintegrating, it endures as a self-cohered form. It does not move away from its own position to a next position. It remained in its self-same location the whole time. It simply endures as itself. Indeed, there’s a sense in which movement is an artefact of seeing the world in third-person.

(In a more general sense, motion stems from the very notion of distinct location in the first place. In order to avoid getting distracted by this claim, I have provided a more detailed discussion in the following footnote.⁴)

Motion is not the transition from one position to the next. From the ball’s first-person perspective, it is not moving away from itself to a new position. What changes is the background of change through which it persists. But even then, the constituent parts of the background, from their own position, did not change either. The air which is being forced out of the way is simply asserting its own boundary too. Every object in motion, in its own first-person position, is just enduring as itself.

Our own subjective sense of travelling through time can also be explained in similar terms. As enduring beings, we ourselves are surviving and enduring as a distinct entity in a context of competing boundaries and background change.

We add an unnecessary additional layer to our present experience called ‘the future’. In reality, we never exceed the present and transition into a future. The present is always the future-most state.

Even when predicting the future in our heads, it looks like this:

With some modification, this also depicts objective-oriented navigation. We imagine a goal, and find a way to travel through the objects and obstacles preventing its obtainment. We cling to some image we have an affinity for, and then find the present-compatible route to it. We can contract our muscles in such a way as to bring that about. The line of succession between one place and the next is not some fundamental feature of existence.

The feeling of time’s progression is born of specificity and distinction. It is the addition of specific contours and delineation to experience. It is the division of the world into distinct nodes, and then relativistically contrasting these nodes and counting the distinctions between them. By its very nature, this view of reality will always be successive.

Existence in the most general sense is not being progressed forward segment-by-segment, bit-by-bit. Existence is not bumped into existence by a previous state. Existence as a whole endures unerringly without regard for the course of distinct nodes.

Imagine watching ripples in a lake. We see a specific wave progress through time by following that specific phase of the wave. But now consider: what if you gave no preference to that phase of the wave? What if you saw only the unchanging medium of the wave (the water itself) without specific locus? The water isn’t actually travelling in the direction of that wave. There is nothing which can even ‘progress’ if you’re not measuring or following the contours of a specific thing. What if we never cut up reality into segments like this, but instead commit ourselves to the strictest possible monism? Then there is just undivided being: an undivided consciousness.

(There are interesting details to the subjective sense of time which I don’t want to get distracted by, but I’ll just mention a couple in passing by leaving this footnote:⁵)

Now let us expand our focus to the cosmological scale. The universe isn’t strictly speaking expanding or undergoing some kind of absolute motion. Rather each individual part is inertially clinging to its own locus. Every other locality has a similar stubbornness of position too and pursues its own distinct inertia. Here is my somewhat clumsy attempt at illustrating this:

The initial dot represents an original singularity. It does not start as a small location or a small object in a wider space—it is initially everything, everywhere, all at once, but contains the initial potential for all further differentiation. Every potential differentiation tries to manifest. At first, it remains relatively unified and simultaneous, but, as it endures further, this potential differentiation manifests itself more fully into more properly distinct nodes. Each possible differentiated node pursues its own inertial course. This process of differentiation, distinct nodes, distances, succession, etc, brings about an apparent sense of time. Each distinct node endures as itself, differentiating itself from a wider background—recall that this is how we defined motion in general.

If we consider the present-moment as live (i.e. unfossilised, not-passed, original, real-time), then we can consider the present as analogous to a living being which avoids fossilisation. It is an enduring being. When considered in this manner, we might also consider the enduring universe as more akin to a living being (but, as with living beings, it is also dying to some extent too. Maybe the better term is “a surviving being”). A slowly dying banana shrivels up into increasingly individualistic localities, but it still retains its overall form and resists total dissolution for a while. Eventually, however, every constituent part of the banana gets snapped off from its original living principle and pursues its own wildly disparate course. It failed to keep itself renewed by means of its original source of life.

The cosmos is likewise proliferating into every possible degree of differentiation after losing its original unity, but with important caveats that I will discuss in a moment.

First, let us quickly ask: what is this aspect of existence which is live?—and I mean live in a somewhat loose sense, drawing on its various connotations such as “live TV” or a “living being”. The answer is as follows: it is that aspect of existence which is never past, never stagnant or fossilised, i.e. is always present and up-to-date.

After someone dies, a video of them when they were alive is not the same as them actually being alive. When alive, their real living quality is their up-to-dateness and enduring through to the present moment. It is the original them, not some fossilised material remnant. Their original quality consisted in their not being anchored in antecedent matter. And while they were alive, they never had a fossilised identity with any given physical state either, and it is this constant supersedence and newness—this living principle—which we want back.⁶

Our living-ness is this unfossilisible consciousness persisting through physical states. Our physical body at any given snapshot of time is not so different to a flake of dead skin. It never quite forms an identity with our most up-to-date presence. It is precisely this non-fossilisable identity which distinguishes the living principle from dull, stagnant matter. In other words, there is something contained in this concept of live-ness which speaks to an existence which is not reduced to material form and thus endures in spite of all change and attempts at being snapped off the source of origin and renewal. It is that aspect of existence which endures in a fundamental temporal sense and evades precise physical identity. It is always ahead.

Moreover, given that life is ahead—i.e. the more enduring essence which subsists through change—then it also shares that same property which characterises eternal existence as a whole: something which never ossifies and cannot die.

Matter, on the other hand, has this property of sticking to a state and degenerating from there—sort of like the sunk cost fallacy. It is snapped off from original input and renewal, and holds onto some dead state.

However, matter is in fact enduring in some broader sense. It also remains “live” in the present, albeit with a greater tendency towards antecedence than the living principle in animate beings. That is to say, matter doesn’t completely succumb to Zeno’s paradox in the temporal sense (i.e. regression towards antecedence). It does keep up with existence to some extent.

The most antecedent pole of existence is the reductio ad absurdum of Zeno’s paradox. The antecedent regression towards infinitesimals. This is logically equivalent to zero, and so it cannot have a real and substantive existence, but the mere potentiality for this route still offers that temptation. Therefore, there exists this tendency for things to differentiate and undergo infinite division. But the universe is prevented from degenerating entirely out of existence, because no amount of division can bring the original infinite existence down to zero. The degeneration will always remain a fraction, never an outright zero.

Imagine kicking a ball, but the ball completely and instantaneously disintegrates, and its pulverised remnants also disintegrate with equal rapidity, and this continual disintegration happens at such a maximum rate that there isn’t even time for it to assert any kind of resistance or boundary; it just continually reduces to the point of infinitesimals without resisting/enduring as any form. It would simply puff out of existence. Matter’s presence, like ours, is something like the opposite tendency: stability and endurance. Therefore, it remains live. Matter’s endurance and remaining compatibility with the present therefore resembles the Darwinian struggle for life. What exists in the present is the current result of this struggle, which is why we can categorise the celestial bodies into an almost zoological-like taxonomy.

Allow me to float this as a possibility: Are black holes some kind of run-away regression into antecedence that cannot keep up with the present?—i.e. a real-life Zeno’s paradox? I’m not qualified to say, but it strikes me as an interesting way of viewing the problem. Perhaps there’s a sense in which black holes are where matter failed to “keep up” with the present, and thus recedes into the past, i.e. towards infinitesimal. Visible matter might be the successful endurance against that possibility.

In general, we can speak of temporal endurance as the true basis of enduring existence. It is that which “lives” (is “live”). Generic matter represents only a partial success, whereas animate life represents a more temporally enduring living principle which even transcends matter.

I don’t want to contradict well-established science, so I will now give a brief survey of whether this agrees with the big bang theory. If we consider that antecedence has its ultimate origin in the original living principle, then it must commence from a unified origin rather than from various unconnected locations. Therefore, there must be some apparent singular, indeed seemingly localised origin, even though this origin was in fact a kind of delocalised infinitude (which, as a perfect antonym of singularity, has a kind of analytic equivalence to singularity, similar to how white and black—two opposite poles of each other—share essential properties like blankness, undifferentiatedness, and a confusion over which is the default).

This origin is pregnant with the potential for maximum differentiation and distinct inertial courses. In the course of this maximum pursuit of entropy, there is the filtration of what can endure. Stable, enduring forms thus appear—a cosmos which can exist is what ends up existing.

I am forced to describe this as happening in succession, as though existence is progressing in +1 increments. However, I do this merely for the sake of clarity. Existence is not temporally located at some slice of time progressing to a next frame of existence. The most complete existence does not wait for antecedence to catch up and ping its completion into existence. The complete existence is already fully ahead, and the deepest antecedence is always prior. Every possible antecedent already owed its existence to the original potentiality. As the unreduced origin, it contains all of its possible subsequents, roughly similar to how a mathematical limit does not require iterating every term of the series for the sum to be complete.

Unfortunately, we cannot grasp this, because we are stuck in time. We ourselves are in some mode of antecedence—like a subset of a superset of infinity. Our grade of existence is fundamentally antecedent and incomplete—and not in a summative sense, such that we arrive at a most temporally complete existence with enough ticks of the clock, but in a fundamental sense. We simply cannot catch up with the superset, even if pursued to infinity. We are a kind of relative Zeno’s paradox from the complete perspective—inherently behind, receding into antecedence.

This fundamental antecedence is almost palpable in our clinging to our material form. Our existence as a specific being enduring as a specific form places a limit on our existence. It is a stubborn globule, existing in a context of alienating change that it cannot fully subsume. As we will see in the final illustration of this essay, there’s almost an intuitive force to the statement: by clinging, we are behind. True timeless existence is unreduced and non-specific. It survives all change. To repeat an analogy from earlier: it does not fixate on a specific wave and watch the wave persist in contest with a medium until its final exhaustion and death.

The arbitrariness of our landing in this situation has a lot to do with the fact that timeless existence—as the never-ending living principle—is not a one-and-done affair. It is perpetually being itself, and thus in some sense requires its constant repetition at every gradation. I forget who said this, but existence is more akin to a verb, not a noun. Existence is existing. Therefore, the repetition of its antecedence is also perpetual, and conscious beings simply have to occupy every possible vacancy in all this.⁷

Maybe this is my arrival at the idea of “eternal recurrence”, except there is the possibility of intellectual transcendence and self-realisation among elevated minds. It dawns upon such minds that, in ceasing to pay attention to specificity and antecedence, they stop feeling behind or at risk of falling into the past—i.e. they lose the fear of death.⁸

I hesitate to make use of a physical analogy here, because it’s far too easy to regard it as an actual physical description. However, on account of its beauty, I want to quickly highlight the analogy of a vortex, whereby a non-stagnant flow is contrasted with a clingy localised stagnancy. Whenever I watch fluid dynamics unfold, I’m always struck by the beauty of this analogy and its cosmic-like quality:

Again I caution: Do not mistake this for a literal physical description. A physical process cannot describe metaphysics. I’m just highlighting the abstract principle of non-stagnant fluency (e.g. the ever-live renewal of eternal existence) being contrasted with a stagnant localisation which sucks things antecedently in its direction due to some unfilled vacancy. In fact, this fluid illustration has a similar dynamic to my other illustrations in this essay. See how motion, even in this physical analogy, can have a derivative appearance—something endures in a context of flow, and this is indistinguishable from it “moving” through stationary water.⁹

In the everyday physical sense, a vortex has some obvious physical cause like an object obstructing a flow. Metaphysically, what I am describing is a more inherent contrast between the most renewed, never-stagnant temporality and the always-possible vacancy for a more specific existence.

I’ve digressed somewhat, so I will now conclude this essay rather abruptly by saying: antecedence cannot be our origin. Existence is upheld by means of it not becoming past, i.e. it remaining present. There was no first “cause” or “mover” of existence. Existence wasn’t bumped into being. It did not progress into existence. There was just regression into lesser degrees.

1. Paragraph 6 of my essay on memory.

2. I’m aware of the two main proposed solutions to Zeno’s paradox:

• Firstly, there is the simple mathematical proof that an infinite series can be added to make a finite number. This, however, does not solve Zeno’s problem, because in the real world, the infinite series has to be actually physically instantiated, not abstractly extrapolated without following the infinite series through to its end.

• Then there are Planck’s units, which are also alleged to solve Zeno’s paradox, but this also fails for the reason I have outlined in this essay. Namely, it requires that the world’s course teleport from frame to frame, even though there is nothing within each frame that can serve as a transitionary distance to be crossed. There is no medium between each one, and within each frame there is no change or motion to be imparted.

3. By the way, a similar paradox would exist for spatial occupation itself. If space can be reduced to the minimum unit of space, then either it is an infinitesimal space-occupation which cannot achieve escape velocity (so to speak) from a radius of zero and thus cannot occupy a chunk of space, or else it is an arbitrarily small discrete unit of space-occupation within which there cannot be a further divisible space-occupation (in which case its essence does not have the property of space-occupation, but somehow becomes space occupation on a macro scale).

To overcome this paradox, we can resort to the same solution used in the main body of this essay. Namely, that unreduced space is the original thing. Divided space is the subsequent/antecedent. Furthermore, as with time, the original unreduced space is not built upwards from antecedent units of space.

4. A difference of position is the desire of an enduring and self-clinging entity to remain undeteriorated, self-same and distinct. This will to live/endure as a distinct being segments existence. Movement is simply an extension of this principle of difference of position.

Motion is the particular scenario when two distinct entities actually meet each other’s boundaries. In the simplest case, the object does not get catapulted but simply asserts its distinction and undergoes a mere push. For example, if one blocky mass pushes another similarly solid (i.e. non-springy) mass, then it will carry it forward like a bulldozer rather than launch it off like a ball being kicked. Nothing is happening here except the assertion of boundaries. However, in the case of kicking a ball, the ball accepts some distortion to its form. (This, by the way, is internal displacement, whereby the ball stores motion by allowing motion within itself, i.e. it undergoes compression, because materiality itself is not actually fully unified.) When initially kicked, this compression passes on this request for movement to its opposing hemisphere, which eventually compels the opposing hemisphere to move out of the way, but this then also relieves the first hemisphere of its need to stay compressed. The resulting decompression of the first hemisphere offloads itself against the foot. So, in addition to a mere push (like a bulldozer merely asserting its boundary), there is the additional discharge of the initial compression. Therefore, there is not only mere motion, but acceleration.

We might therefore say this: If motion can be described as the assertion of boundary, then acceleration can be described as an additional and continuing assertion of boundaries. The ball had to make space for itself (its own internal displacement had to be pushed out into equilibrium). All propulsion is the assertion of boundaries, e.g. a propellor blade in contrast with air, or a rocket engine in contrast with expanding gas. Movement is the result of everything asserting its boundary and maintaining its self-same locus.

5. There is something like a sense of timelessness when you are so entranced by an object of your attention that it completely excludes the background you are situated in. You lose the sense of your boundary in contrast with the world, meaning your sense of distinct-self temporarily dissolves, and with it time also.

By contrast, if something dangerous is about to unfold, you become acutely aware of your status as a distinct object with boundaries. You feel yourself enduring in an alienating background and surviving through that overall event. This intensifies your sense of time.

Therefore: time flies when you’re having fun, but it slows down when you’ve just been launched over your bicycle’s handlebars.

6. It’s interesting to note that this aversion to fossilisation is also why we tend to cringe at hearing our own voices and seeing ourselves on camera. We feel alienated from this reduced and fossilised version of ourselves.

7. In my opinion, the origin’s overall continuity with its antecedence must play some role in shaping its overall character—namely as something which is wise to itself and its potential. It is not a blank consciousness, but rather the all-knowing apotheosis of its antecedents, with greater psychological proximity with its more proximate antecedents—in other words, it is probably more sympathetic to the human experience than to the experience of generic matter, as humanity is the mind achieving supremacy over matter, i.e. more akin to its origin. If the origin was completely unaware of its antecedents, this ignorance would be a mental vacancy that attracts curiosity and invites it to lose hold of itself in that direction. The apotheosis is instead the genuine triumph over antecedence, not the total ignorance of it.

8. If you really reflect on your existential anxiety and fear of death, you will notice that contains emotions such as “life is passing you by” and the feeling that things are falling apart and that you need to keep up with the world. It is the vague sense that you are dying.

9. Motion is derivative of a contrast. An initially mild divergence can multiply into the vast arguments and epic collisions we see in the cosmos. And just as in human conflict, all parties involved will feel like they were simply sticking to their own inertial course and did not cause the commotion.