Big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff
Get your sonic screwdriver ready
As much as we'd love a spin in the Tardis, none of us are time-travelers. Our playground is the present, the only constant in our existence. The past is history, the future is a blank page.
Here's a list of impossible things in our space-time reality just for funzies:
Perpetual motion machines
Levitation
Simultaneous visibility of all sides
Perfectly straight lines
Absolute predictability
Infinite Storage
Time travel to the past
Teleportation
Infinitely dividing a physical object
One can dream.
Our next stop on our quest for the meaning of life? Exploring the twists and turns of how we think, what we think and who we are within the confines of space-time, and what happens when you venture off the beaten path of reality.
How we think about space-time
There are lots of philosophical frameworks, but in the absence of infinite time, I’ll just choose my favorites: Kant and Kierkegaard. It’s my article and I can do what I want!
Immanuel Kant
In the vast cosmos, Kant, a German philosopher, gave us Deontology – a cosmic guide about duty, using our minds to unlock self-respect and freedom. Our universal duty? Treat each other well, it's our moral GPS.
Kant saw things as tools (like a pencil) and beings with intrinsic worth (that's us). He said humans hold major moral value compared to stuff.
No fan of treating people like stuff, Kant said we need internal control. Mastering emotions is key, giving us freedom from being pushed around like stuff. So, in the vast cosmic journey, mapping out our future, according to Kant, means being responsible with the stuff inside us, deciding which emotions to roll with and which ones to dodge – a continuous work in progress.
Søren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard, the dude from Denmark, kicked off European existentialism. He was all about breaking free from society's rules—the stuff that doesn’t suit us.
He thought having too many space-time choices could stress us out and make us do weird things such as opting to endure unhappiness within the constraints of societal expectations.
Living fully means facing fears and taking risks – like sneaking off on a time-travel adventure against your boss' wishes. So dive in and fearlessly roll with the punches, Kierkegaard-style.
What we think space-time is
If you're as nerdy as I am, you might recall the 2005 PC game, Psychonauts. It stars Raz, a character with psychic powers aiming to join the Psychonauts, a group of psychic spies. The game takes you through wild mental worlds, challenging puzzles, and a captivating story. Raz suffers setbacks on the training ground when failing to master his emotional baggage and inner demons.
If we were in basic training to be a member of the Psychonauts, space-time gets a bit trippy when we use them as tools for understanding the human experience, fostering resilience, and unraveling the mysteries within the psyche. In the training matrix, you explore how:
Memory shapes the present and future
Perception influences the present
Mindfulness fosters clarity in the present
Cognitive biases impact the present and future
Mapping out milestones improves the future
Dopamine signals weigh present rewards against future ones
Time addresses the past, present and future
Your mind does weird things when traveling through the labyrinth of your mind. You may start out as your normal 35 years old self living in Los Angeles. Next thing you know, you’ve turned a corner and you’re now that helpless 8 year old when Kelly Audette turned your friends against you at recess.
Take a stroll down the next corridor, and suddenly, you find yourself at your high school reunion. To your horror, your not-so-great boyfriend reveals some neo-Nazi views to your Jewish friends that you didn’t know he had.
Time dilation happens when you spend too much time ruminating on memories from the past and fears of the future will change your perception of the speed of time. This hijacks your reality and effects how you show up in the world.
So what happens when your mind gets stuck in the wrong time ruled by emotional baggage and inner demons without the right safety net in place?
Ideologies on the spectrum from eugenics to total anarchy embody the extremes. It’s like playing whack-a-mole with stuff down memory lane. You think you’re winning, but you’re just creating more paradoxes.
Friends don’t let friends fall into a paradox, warping their sense of reality.
Paradoxes create their own version of a safety net. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry offering advice that promises to transform your life and lead you to boundless wealth and happiness. Amidst the plethora of resources, I'll cut through the noise and share a little secret. Most of it is bullshit.
Emotional baggage and inner demons work together in a formulaic way, making you believe that something good is actually harmful, or that something unnecessary is essential for your survival. Here's how it works:
It begins with a subtle murmur, assigning blame for an unmet need. It persuades you that satisfying your desires independently is crucial, no matter what others say. The unbridled whisper is a lie, dividing you further from the truth and unleashing an inception of paradoxes in paradoxes, making reality devoid of logic and reason.
It occurs so subconsciously that even the most self-aware person might overlook its cue. We have a term for this phenomenon, and it's called low self-worth. You’re basically reducing your inherent worth as a human being and using everyone as stuff to whack-a-mole your mind labyrinth (Kant would be sad). That’s just not what our lives were destined for.
In the theory of relativity, change is this funky thing. It says time and space aren't the same for everyone. It depends on how fast you're moving or the gravity around you. So, what feels like a change in time for one person might be totally different for someone else in a different spot. It's like time is playing hide and seek, but it's also kinda playing by its own rules depending on where you are and how fast you're going.
Here on Earth, time flows at a speed that escapes our immediate notice.
So you know what a genuine safety net is? Friends and family who support you. Managers who are invested in your path. Mentors to bridge knowledge gaps and coaches to propel you forward. All individuals you can trust to keep you grounded in who you are in reality and how far you’ve come—because time is a fickle thing.
Who we are meant to be in space-time
Alright, buckle up for a bit of a touchy subject. I swear it’ll be fun.
I was watching a documentary on ancient Japan, and from the get-go, it's tribes colonizing tribes. Fast forward to today, and tribalism is still hanging around like your go-to safety net against anyone trying to snatch your stuff. The desire for greener pastures is a strong one and your bound to make poor decisions especially when people who don’t gel with us get involved.
Now, racism feels like it's been hanging around forever, but surprisingly, the term was only coined in the roaring '20s by a German sociologist named Magnus Hirschfeld. He spotted rising antisemitism against Jews and decided to slap a label on it. If you really narrow it down though, racism is basically adults who never learned that humans have equal inherent worth, or described in a cooler cosmic way, humans creating a ripple effect in our version of the space-time continuum. Sounds pretty scary. How do we stop the ripples from reaching every corner of the world like our friend playing whack-a-mole?
Let's take a stroll back to 2003 – a simpler time, filled with Harry Potter Puppet Pals and MySpace playlists. Politics took a backseat, and life was all about enjoying tunes, not troubles. Yet, that song on the Billboards hinted at some hidden discontent.
In the grand scheme of history, this song could resonate with any era. Despite societal progress, a touch of pessimism lingers. How far are we from the restoration of equilibrium, or an even cooler name—world peace? Well, it depends on your perspective of the present, experience of the past and your level of mind labyrinth mastery. The news and debates, especially on hot topics like Israel/Palestine, make us question our competence.
Considering our life mission is to play our part in achieving a universal harmonious state, let’s see how incompetent we are when we work together towards a common goal within the confines of time and space.
It is literally impossible to:
Wipe out all prejudice
Change attitudes and deep-rooted issues overnight
Make everybody agree
Reach absolute equality
Ignore history's impact
Instantly transform age-old systems
Perfectly understand each other
So with that being said, we can cut each other some slack.
Doesn’t time heal all wounds though? As an American, it’s hard to imagine that we once had beef with Japan. Both of my grandpas fought in WW2 and many of their friends died in battle. Now I can freely sit in an owl cafe sipping my matcha latte in Tokyo and there are no hard feelings. How did we go from the most catastrophic war crimes ever committed to BFFs 👯 in just a few short generations??
The good news is we’re not completely incompetent as a human race. Time and space has confines but a near-perfect world peace could be on the horizon. Alright, so Disney and Studio Ghibli are different but equal in our eyes. Let’s look into why things worked out between the U.S. and Japan after WW2, but not so well after the war in Iraq.
1. Receiving Gifts:
Japan: The U.S. basically set up shop in Japan after the war and helped them get back on their feet
Iraq: Iraq didn’t want Uncle Sam’s help.
2. Acts of Service:
Japan: Uncle Sam rolled in and was like, "Let's give this place a democracy makeover," and it worked out pretty smoothly.
Iraq: Iraq had its own political journey, and the aftermath got a bit more complicated.
3. Quality Time:
Japan: During the Cold War, the U.S. and Japan found a common enemy and teamed up against communism.
Iraq: Middle East went a different trajectory, with Iraq dealing with other problems.
4. Words of Affirmation:
Japan: Japan shared similar values, making the connection post-war a bit more in tune.
Iraq: The Middle East has its own flavor, and Iraq's history and relationships in the region didn’t connect in the same way.
And sometimes that’s just the way it goes. Kudos to Japan for being great sports. You can’t force a nation to accept your love. So either time heals all wounds or it divides us until our conventional understanding of time loses its significance. Hence, it’s a good idea to have safety nets to remind us of how far we’ve come.
The truth about space-time
tl;dr The Golden Rule
Harness the power to R-E-S-P-E-C-T, persist the truth even when it’s uncomfortable, and let time do it’s thing.
Maybe don’t slap the toxic label on someone after a metaphorical war crime, maybe think about the ripple effect in our space-time continuum. Or, you know, find a common enemy—it's a solid tactic.
Evil really does happen in a vacuum because folks are stuck in a not-so-perfect world with not-so-perfect people. The key is trying to be better, kinder, and more understanding each day. And maybe we’re not so far off from near-perfect world peace.
*Edited for typos.