At some level there’s the mathematics that everyone agrees on and everyone can use. But what does this mean in terms of time and spacetime?
Something I’d like to reflect on before we dive in is that there is this very human tendency—very, very human tendency—of wanting the universe, wanting reality to make sense to us, to be what we want it to be. We can want reality to be invariant. We can want what’s real for me to be what’s real for you, or else fear that we’re no longer sharing in reality. We can bring assumptions to the table without even realizing we’re bringing them.
This is another wonderful popular book, one that I highly recommend, by Sean Carroll—The Biggest Ideas in the Universe. And if you pick up this book—and I would say most, the majority of writing including popular writing, but also philosophical writing, even physics interpretations of relativity—they will tend towards this interpretation of relativity: Sean Carroll writes: “In relativity, it’s no longer true that space and time have separate objective meanings. What really exists is spacetime.” That was the impression I got reading popular science books, even as a kid. Since only spacetime is invariant between two events, the reasoning goes, you can’t even really disentangle space from time anymore. So there’s this reification of this thing—spacetime.
And that can lead to the conclusion that became dominant after relativity came to the fore: the past, the present, and the future are equally real. Let’s take this a little further—not to torture ourselves, but to really see the impact that a view of reality can have on us. Relativity “means”—I’ll put that in quotation marks—the 4D spacetime block is real. And that “means” that you and me and our dog and our cat and any objects are actually 4D spacetime objects. Sometimes called “worms.” Only the tiniest, tiniest slice of this spacetime worm is ever at the present—that view is called perdurantism—somewhat confusingly contrasted with endurantism, which is the view that you can be wholly present at each moment of existence.
Part of this exploration can be how much we may, in our sense of our identity, our sense of suffering—even in how much we’re trying to be present—have a sense of being spread out in time. Maybe not a 4D spacetime worm, but a sense of being kind of smeared out in time. Instead, what if I don’t leave any trace of existence behind me? Nor is there one ahead. I get to be wholly in the flow of this moment.
When we get to feel that there’s actually nothing—no dimension of any kind—that has to hold those past or future events, we can feel the wholeness that all of us is entirely held in this 3D space now. Maybe it doesn’t have to feel like a limitation. It can feel like liberation. Or just maybe a little bit more workable. A little bit more bearable, livable.
Especially next time, we’ll get into more about how both of those views are equally valid in terms of empirical physics—both are options. And maybe you’ve already come to your own conclusions. I’ve certainly been completely unbiased in my presentation of this, as you can tell—Not! So let’s begin to explore this experientially for ourselves.
No Time, No Problem?
An Honest Look at “Timelessness” in Physics and Living
What if there’s no time—and that’s not a problem for physics? What if there’s no time—could that be a solution for our suffering?
Rather than offering answers of what to think, this series offers ways of thinking that can move us past the pressures we put on ourselves: from the “should” of trying to “be present” to the “should” of being 4D spacetime worms to be compatible with relativity! Somewhere between those “shoulds,” I got stuck until physicist and Tai Chi Master Wonchull Park showed me how to think about nature simply, livably. Each session includes an hour-long meditation practice, where we get to try on different conceptions and perceptions of time to discover how equivalently valid options that physics provides can impact our levels of illusion and freedom. We’ll be reading together from a few sources—such as Wonchull Park’s Essential Reality & Time, Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, Dogen’s Shobogenzo Uji—to deeply question the role(s) of time in our lives. Looking forward to our discoveries.
Thank you for Being with Being.
beingwithbeing.org
mackenziehawkins.substack.com
