Can the NOW ever exsist?

[Hayabusa Rider]

Well M, it seems to me that time is a dimension all it's own, but perhaps our concept or perception of it is vague because we lack the "vision" to see it clearly. We see two points separated by some distance. This occurs independently of time. After all if something is one meter away from you, it does not matter for how long a time that is. It just is. Two events separated by time lack a spatial component. If something is happening at 1 meter away in 1 minute, it could easily happen at 2 meters. I maintain it is a quality of people that makes space seemingly easier to grasp. That is illusion. I can say "what is one minute, really. What is it made of?" That statement could be "what is one meter really. What is it made of?" Indeed in an absolute sense what IS distance? For me, the problem is that space and time is atomistic. It cannot be broked down to more basic components. That is how humans define things really. We use simpler terms to describe someting the more complex. Time and space ARE the most basic components of the universe. It is like a cosmic christmas tree. The events of reality are hung on it like so many ornaments, except we cannot perceive the tree in it's true form. We just look at the pretty lights of happenings and places and get a sense for the basic structure of the tree.

 

[datalink7]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
The meaning of life, quite surprisingly, is to live, why?

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: datalink7

Originally posted by: Moonbeam The meaning of life, quite surprisingly, is to live, why?

That is as good and concise an answer as you will ever find.

 

[xBopx]

Q]Originally posted by: Moonbeam
The meaning of life, quite surprisingly, is to live, why?[/quote] Thats like saying the meaning of peanut butter is peanut butter. Its circular reasoning, therefore it doesn't really tell us anything.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Hayabusarider

Originally posted by: datalink7

Originally posted by: Moonbeam The meaning of life, quite surprisingly, is to live, why?

That is as good and concise an answer as you will ever find.

Since we're going off on a tangent... I would say that the meaning of life is to create more life like your own, i.e. procreation, reproduction.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: Bop
Q]Originally posted by: Moonbeam The meaning of life, quite surprisingly, is to live, why?

Thats like saying the meaning of peanut butter is peanut butter. Its circular reasoning, therefore it doesn't really tell us anything.[/quote]

It is not the answer that is the problem, but the question. You ask for the meaning of life, but you could ask about the marital status of the number 4, or what is blue. No, not by the color temperature of a black body radiator of a certain degree Kelvin. What IS blue. Life is a thing in itself. To understand it, you must experience it, and that is all the meaning there is. The meaning is in the doing.

 

[FrontlineWarrior]

Originally posted by: CubicZirconia

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Actually you have it all wrong. When the mind is fully turned on, when one becomes pure being, time ends and eternity begins. In the ocean of love there is no time, only the beloved. It the difference between watching the river of time and becoming the river. The only difference is that the river of time has no bank. Thought, division, the perception of time, these are all the fear of being.

To be or not to be, that is the question, this side of being.

He knows what he's talking about.

I'm sticking with my original idea. Now, in a physical sense, never really exists. As far as I can tell, what Moonbeam wrote above is purely philisophical and has almost nothing to do with whether or not now exists.

that's not philosophy. that's the shroom talking.

 

[loup garou]

Of course it does: DUH!

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Hayabusarider

Originally posted by: datalink7

Originally posted by: Moonbeam The meaning of life, quite surprisingly, is to live, why?

That is as good and concise an answer as you will ever find.

Since we're going off on a tangent... I would say that the meaning of life is to create more life like your own, i.e. procreation, reproduction.

That is what living things do, but what does that mean? What do we mean by mean? Not as neat and tidy a thing as many would like

 

[FrontlineWarrior]

there is no meaning of life. you can pretend though.

 

[nmcglennon]

Since we're going off on a tangent... I would say that the meaning of life is to create more life like your own, i.e. procreation, reproduction.

Not for everyone... some people have no children, then have no existence? but they ARE alive... so there is no meaning to their life? I think a purpose to life, if you chose, is to bear offspring to ensure your family has offspring to carry on the same. However some people do not care, and they do not choose this as their mission in life... its up to the person... everyone can choose their own meaning in their life.

 

[tbates757]

Originally posted by: MacBaine

Originally posted by: Walleye

Originally posted by: MacBaine
When will then be now?

Soon.

How soon?

Right now, actually. Missed it. Sorry.

 

[Anubis]

there is no such thing as the present. because everytime tiy stop and analize the "now" it becomes teh past.

 

[Moonbeam]

The meaning of life is known by being in the now. That's what it means 'to live'. To live isn't to vegetate, it's to experience being.

Where there's philosophy in that is a mystery to me. It's love.

You are right, Evil1, that is why to be, the analysist must die. The big question is how to let him die. FrontlineWarrior has the answer, but he probably doesn't know it.

Hay, it's amazing to try to contemplate that you and me were once contained in zero time zero space.

 

[FrontlineWarrior]

happiness is evaluative. therefore to live a happy life you must reflect. which is why an unexamined life is not worth living; it is a life devoid of happiness.

pleasure is non-evaluative. you can be high of drugs and feel pleasure. but humans have enough mental capacity to desire more than simple pleasure.

you never perceive things as they are, but only as they were. for there is always a separation of time between a change in an object, the time the light takes to reach your eye, and the time it takes for the nerves in the eye to hyperpolarize, and the time it takes to relay that to your brain, and presumeably to your consciousness. the same goes for all your other senses. so in this respect, "now" is merely an illusion. for humans, the realm of "now" only exists in your thoughts. your connection to the world is inevitably limited to the past.

 

[DX2Player]

Time is more than just perception, to say otherwise is to say that all time stops once we are sleeping, in a coma, or dead. Its not just something in our heads, its real and I seek to understand its passing.

 

[FrustratedUser]

Originally posted by: MacBaine

Originally posted by: FrustratedUser
You read this NOW, don't you!
Proof enough?

Be careful with the weed and crack pipe.

But I can read it over and over. Does this mean ATOT is stuck in the 'now'?

Well, everytime you read it. It is NOW.
mmmmk?

 

[FrontlineWarrior]

maybe what your want to hear is that time is the motion of objects. without motion there is no time. a day is calculated by day and night. a minute calculated by the pointer in your clock. a second by the motion of atoms of helium. this is a common view in medieval philosophy. i think it might have originated with aristotle, but i'm not sure about that. in this sense, the motion of objects occurs regardless of our perceiving it.

a consequence of this view is that time did not exist before the first motion. the medievals thought this was caused by the prime mover. the mover unmoved. i.e. God. so you can say time didn't exist before God. but God created time.

i personally think this view is bullpuckey. but i think time is an artificial thing our mind imposes on the world. time doesn't exist apart from human conception of it. it is merely the result of our conception. for if we stopped viewing the world with time involved, time would not exist. i dunno if that makes sense because it probably doesn't.

in any case, none of this really matters. just live happy.

 

[Atlantean]

Now will always exist, however there will be an infinite number of nows. Good to see you are thinking out of the box.... anyone else think that humans that humans are too linear? Almost everything we do is based on time.

 

[Moonbeam]

Oh Boy:

"happiness is evaluative. therefore to live a happy life you must reflect. which is why an unexamined life is not worth living; it is a life devoid of happiness."

Evaluation is the source of unhappiness, not happiness. Evaluation is comparison, the recognition of better and worce, good and evil, the source of judgment and condemnation. It results in illusion, the wish for the good and the revulsion for the bad. The one sure consequence of socialization is the inculcation of a certainty that one is worthless. From that begins the search for happiness, the wish to escape ones inner hell. The unexamined life is the life that leaves the feeling of worthlessness undisturbed. Reflection of the analytic type is based on the false notion that the observer, a separate part of a whole, can see the whole. The eye cannot see itself. This is still nothing but evaluation and division, an analysis of the dead past.

"pleasure is non-evaluative. you can be high of drugs and feel pleasure. but humans have enough mental capacity to desire more than simple pleasure."

So is joy. I'll take it.

"you never perceive things as they are, but only as they were. for there is always a separation of time between a change in an object, the time the light takes to reach your eye, and the time it takes for the nerves in the eye to hyperpolarize, and the time it takes to relay that to your brain, and presumeably to your consciousness. the same goes for all your other senses. so in this respect, "now" is merely an illusion. for humans, the realm of "now" only exists in your thoughts. your connection to the world is inevitably limited to the past."

Sophistry, as far as I can see. A now that exists in thought is the now that is of the past. Thought is always of the past. Ones connection to the world isn't limited to the past. One IS only in the now. Perception is immediate. It is the now. We see the light of ancient suns, if we see them, only now. The past has gone, the future has yet not come. We are only in the now. Time is fear. Thought is fear. Time is thought, the past regret, the future worry. To die to thought is to open the door to love. Scarry.

 

[Chaotic42]

If you're talking about time, some people think that there might be a basic unit of time.


Link (Geocities, sorry)

Enjoy!

 

[DX2Player]

Do you ever look at people and cercomstance, what if, when I, used to be through their eyes, than you know and don't ask.

 

[xirtam]

Time exists not as a dimension, not as a figment of our imagination, but as a mere explanation of our inability to grasp the big picture. We see life's events from a limited scope as a slideshow, and we use "time" to express that sequence.

We have made up our own "NOW" to express our current state. So can it exist? Yes... sorta.

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: LethalWolfe
Now is now. Now always exists because it's now. It's never the past, it's never the future, it's always now.


Lethal

But then the question is at what point does NOW become THEN? And when does the FUTURE become NOW?

 

[blakeatwork]

Originally posted by: MacBaine

Originally posted by: FrustratedUser
You read this NOW, don't you!
Proof enough?

Be careful with the weed and crack pipe.

But I can read it over and over. Does this mean ATOT is stuck in the 'now'?

No, because that Now is different from the previous Now...

Every second is simply a series of "Now". everything changes from one Now to the next, You breath, blink, exhale, swallow, have a heartbeat or two, etc ad nauseum...

That's why time is infinite...