I often think of things like "living in the now", but it's been bothering me for a while. What is now? I mean, now is a local reference frame in my head, but really seems to consist of a few seconds. Certainly it has to lag the "real" now (the present of the clock) by a few milliseconds at least or whatever for my brain to process what it deems to be happening right now. So does the now I speak of always have to be specified by the context in which I use it? Do I have to say "the now in my head" (which is more time than the "no time" of the clock (seemingly a few seconds of stimulous and thought all sliding along right behind the "no time" of the clock), or "the now of the clock"? When then, is now? It's always right now, but right now is always changing... but now by the clock isn't enough time for anything to change. Right now by the clock isn't any time at all. So there is no "right now", even though that's all there is? Hmmm.
Yes, your Now will always lag a few milliseconds from the moment you began to think about Now to the moment that you became aware of it, but why is this important? Living in the now is a more general thing, like living in the moment, seizing the opportunity as soon as you see it, experiencing each day for what it is and being aware that each day is full of moments that you probably miss, but c'est la vie, the brain refreshes itself the same way we blink, so there are many moments that we must simply miss, even if they are just nano seconds of time, the point is to experience those moments that you do notice. But don't worry about the milliseconds... what are you, a bean counter? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
i think it is more THINKING bout 'now' is te lagging behind. for if you say 'it is now' ten by the time you have closured the sentence 'now' ha moved on/ so the 'problem' is thought as in language and thought, where its syntax uses a noun to desscribe a verb.....only withthought/thinking is tere a 'now'....an abstracted 'moment' from dynamic process
LOL. Sort of I guess. The deal being that it's easy to mix up the two when speaking of "now". Which exists? The future and past are both abstracts, but in the sense of "the now" as in "the present of the clock", we live in the past (at least a smidge). Thus that now is ALSO an abstract, and the "now" in which we live isn't really "now" by the clock but a "relative now" that is completely dependent upon the speed at which your brain processes stuff. Abstractions lag "the real present" and thus can only really be spoken of as things past? Goddamn beans.
perhaps, but it also takes time for the signal to get from your retinal never or whatever into the visual cortex, and then processed into something informative to you about the state of your environment.
at note forum sometime back.......a rational-mystic science character was going on about te slight lag between thinking to do someting and then the action.....which what you said reminds me of........somewhere i found a challenge to tis idea and made noes, but cant remember. so i will have to improvize as i am seeing it, we are just 'conscious'...ie, askin questions like ths etc, doing what we do consciously. we also have an 'unconscious'...in this meanin meaning that we are subliminally aware which our conscious mind may not seem aware of.....if thismakes sense.....so what i am suggesting is the unconscious mind is far quicker than te conscious mind seems to be. tis would explain tat when the 'conscioous' mind is........expanded eithe psychedelically or natrual exceptional exprinces or holiday, and having sex, fun, then time is much more differnt......so whatever 'time' is or the 'now' is it is extraordinarily flexible, and is synchronized with consciousness--ie., consciousnes which includes 'conscious' and 'the unconscious'
the unconscious mind is quicker than the conscious mind, but thats only because the conscious mind relies on the unconscious mind to exist. when you react to something without thinking, that is your unconscious mind acting. your conscious mind just tries to justify and explain what your unconscious mind does. both are lagged by the speed at which signals move through the body.
I've wondered about the same sort of thing Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=36399
Yep... something like a trillionth of a trillionth of a second (enough time for quantum gravity to settle into a single state from a jumble or proabilities... theoretically of course Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!)
The question you pose cannot be answered here. I believe that the issue of time, and what is "now", and what is past-present-future, may be the most difficult concept there is. The best we can do is talk around it.
Be here now. Buddhism developed a whole philosophy about this. It would take a lot (a lot) to explain. But you can meditate on "be here now", pure presence. This means not depending on the past or future, so that you would have a sense of being. As soon as you ask "Why? How?", you're not (in the) present anymore, but are dealing with assumptions and preconceptions that you have gathered in your life.
i am not sure i agree that both are lagged behind. not sure what you mean. i am more seeing itas a sychronicity between 'outer reality' and the unconscious.........spontaneity. evn now consciously thinking. every thought is happening now isn't it?
i think this only really became a problem when clocks were introduced. Our sense of time has become externalized (i.e. we see it as a steady force ticking away inexorably no matter what we do or think). But older cultures measured time by events (the "time of the great flood", the "reign of Tiberius", some older folk still refer to "the time of the great depression", etc.). The alternative is to think of "now" is your sitz im leben (place in life), to use a term of historicists. One way of finding this "now" is to think of yourself as an octopus (bear with me), and slowly retract all your "tentacles" (wherever they might be) one by one, until you are adrift in clock-time, sitting on the second-indicator of the clock so to speak. Instead of time being your master, you are now the master of your time.
Is that an appeal to authority? Why is it invalidated because they talk about it? Perhaps they are not thinking of it the way I am? I think I'm trying to figure out what the "now" really is, where it exists... which aspect of it we're speaking of when we say that's where we live. I was thinking of it in terms of "what do I know right now"? Well, I can't know anything right now because there isn't enough now to know it in. By the time I verbalize what I think I know it isn't now anymore, for instance - at least it's not the now that it was when I "knew" it. What about the time it takes to think it? Do you know what you knew at the beginning of your thought as compared to end? Is "knowledge" the slope of a "line" tangent (in or just behind "the real present") to the collision of short and long term memory? Sort of a collision between present and past experience? Meh. I dunno. I'm just freewheeling. I'm thinking about definitive knowledge I guess. I dunno I'm just wading through this kind of aimlessly today. I'm distracted by life stuff and haven't figured out if I have a point in here or not. There's something in here, but it might just be philosophical funk. There are plenty of things in my mind I don't "KNOW". What about it?
when you think isn't it happening now? the actual thinking, not you trying to quickly find the 'now' thought......so isthinking time? is thinking time? and is the cessation of the thinker separated frm thought the 'end of time'?......when you daydream, are you aware of 'now'....wheres it gone then?
For whom is "now" more important? For you or the clock? Really everything exists now, but time is changing. I think you could say that you exist in your whole life. Doesn't that equal you and your life? So "now" you could change your life. Life for me is change in the whole, your whole life is changing. It's a mystery. Then again, we only have focus in 2% of the vision, the rest is a blurr. But we see it as if it wasn't, cause it isn't so important than what we focus on.
the signals that travel through neurons have a limited speed. it is pretty fast, but its still limited. so your mind, subconscious and conscious, are not actually recieving information at the exact same time it is happening. you are not actually thinking in the 'now' but rather a little bit behind the 'now'.
people have used the sun as an external measurement of time for thousands of years. i don't see how its really that different than a clock.
