Stop the Clocks

First up, I want to say that the book I was co-writing, The Thought Report 2011, is now out and available to buy. Just head on over here if you're keen. Again, proceeds go towards the Bulembu charity, so please, if you can pick up a copy of this book, do so. It's for a truly worthwhile cause, so I encourage you to pick up a copy and spread the word around to people you know. Thanks guys.




And now onto a post.

First off, a warning; this particular post is probably going to sound bat-shit crazy and completely spaced out and may possibly even make no sense, so just keep that in mind. I'm going to talk about something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about and pondering on. It's just one of those things, I guess. But this particular concept which I'm about to discuss has always fascinated me and kept me up many a night. It's such an unfathomable concept and one that will probably never be able to be fully comprehended by people. It is, I think, the most powerful force in the universe, because it is something that I personally believe cannot be controlled in any way.

What is this force?

Time.

This is going to be really hard for me to get my thoughts across, because even to me they're hard to make sense of, but I'll do my best. Time has always fascinated me. It's always got me thinking. And I should start off by saying that I don't mean 'time' as in "Hey, it three o'clock," and stuff like that. I don't really mean time in that sense, I mean it in the sense of the passage of time. I mean it in the sense of aging, in progression of life (of everything, really) - and how we have absolutely no control over it. Time is just there. It always has been, and always will be. Everything alive is powerless to change that, and I think forever will be. Time is just - time.

I don't believe in time travel at all. I think it is physically impossible for someone to travel backward or forward in time, because I don't believe that time is like a filmstrip that unravels as it goes forward; I think it is a single instance - there is no way to go forward or back because there's nothing to go forward or back to. Time travel to the past isn't possible because there isn't just a frame you can jump back to, and time travel into the future isn't possible because that would imply that everything has already happened and is predetermined. It can't be rewound or sped up, it can't be altered in any way, no one can simply jump forward or backward into a 'frame'. For time travel to exist like that, I think there would have to be parallel universes so that someone could jump not forward or back, but up or down into another universe entirely - something else which I think is impossible and a topic for another time, but I'm just trying to make a point.

The way we measure time - in seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, centuries, millenia - is just our rudimentary way of keeping track of how much time has elapsed. I mean think about it: seconds (and everything that's built off seconds - minutes, hours, and everything after that's built upon a 'second') were coined be people. It was made up. It wasn't a fact of the universe, it was and is an increment in the passage of time that has been labelled as a measurement. It could have easily been made shorter or longer than it is right now (for example, a 'second' could easily have been made to last three seconds or something), and then that would have changed everything - but only in how we as humans have learned to interpret and incorporate time - the universe would have gone on and been exactly the same as it is right now without being affected whatsoever. Time - in the sense of '24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute' - in how we measure it is just a fabricated concept. It's just how we measure its passing, but it in no way has time been tamed or controlled... it's just been labelled.

Time I think is the most powerful force in the universe because it can't be stopped. It cannot be controlled in any way, it cannot really be manipulated. Though, Einstein's Theory of Relativity states that the faster an object is going, the 'slower' time becomes. It says something along the lines that firing someone off at light-speed for a year or two, and then having them come back two years later, four years would have elapsed for them, but because time would have slowed down for them much, more years would have passed on Earth by the time they got back. Something like that anyway. Don't quote me on that exactly, but the theory is along those lines. But I don't know, is that really time travel? I don't think it is. Time travel has to be instantaneous I think, for the person travelling. The Theory of Relativity is something else, so I don't think it counts. At least not in how I try to wrap my head around the whole concept.

Anyway, time has always fascinated me because I think it's something pretty much indescribable. I don't think time as I'm trying to describe has anything to do with seconds, minutes and hours, it's more of the passage everything goes through in the course of existence. The 'time' that we've ascribed to this passage is just how we measure this passage. They're labels and increments we've created, but they're not binding or universal - they're just what was coined, essentially.

My fascination of time is one reason I think I like wearing watches so much. Bit of an obtuse turn in this post, I know, but I think that it goes some way towards explaining my obsession with time. I love wearing watches and wear one every single time I'm out of the house. I'm constantly checking what time it is and can often guess what time it is, and then when I check my watch or a clock I'll be either dead on or damn close. Because I check the time so much, I've hard-wired my brain essentially to keep an accurate interior clock almost, and keep track of it subconsciously.

I'm also obsessed with having all my timekeeping pieces match up. My alarm clock is synced - to the very second - with the time on my computer, which in turned is synced globally with every other device connected to the internet which is in turn I think synced with an atomic clock. And I've done my best to get my watches to sync up as well. Though none of my watches are chronometers so their accuracy isn't bang on, but it's as close as I can make it. One day I will get a watch that's branded officially as a chronometer and then that'll be sweet, yo. But back on track; I have a fascination with watches and clocks and one thing I really want after I've gotten my own place is a grandfather clock. I know. I'm weird, but there you go.

But in summary, I don't think that time is something that can ever be fully understood by humans. I don't it's something that can ever be controlled or manipulated in anyway whatsoever. And because of that, I think that it is truly an unstoppable, unchangeable force. I almost think it exists outside of the universe itself, or doesn't exist at all. I mean, the universe can and probably will 'end'... but time will still go on. But if time goes on and the universe has ended, doesn't that mean time has ceased to exist..? Or is at the very least separate from the universe entirely? I don't know.

And I don't really think anyone ever will.

I'm hoping I've made myself clear enough, but I've reread what I've written multiple times and I'm still not perfectly happy with what I've written and how I've gotten it across. Like I mentioned towards the start of this post, it's a concept I myself haven't fully grasped or understood, so I knew I'd never be able to fully express myself through a blog post. I hope however that it has made some sense. And feel free to sound off in the comments with anything you agree or disagree with, I'd love to have some sort of discussion on this concept.

Stop the Clocks
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, 2011