Time Keeps On Slipping, Slipping, Slipping...

Einstein shows us that time is a dimension.  This means that it is a length that one measures, like depth or height.  And time becomes more important for our lives when we measure it more precisely.  In the ancient world, the day was divided into eight hours, or watches, but now we can have a meeting at 7:45 or determine the fastest runner in the world in the hundredths of a second.

But time is not always so precise.  It has been measured that time moves slightly slower on an airplane than on the earth.  Of course, this has been explained by Einstein's theory of relativity.  But what isn't explained is how time is so different in our minds.

Is time really slower when we are in a desperate emergency?  Certainly, we experience a lot more in a shorter period of time.   Why do some events take so long and other events so quick, but the same period of time is measured?  How is it that as we grow older, time goes quicker, so the years pile up?

How does our mind play with time?  Now that we can measure time we can determine it by the ticks of a clock, but why does it vary so much in our mind?  Which is more important, the time in our minds or the time of a clock?  Is personal time less significant than objective time?  Can we communicate something about ourselves by how our mind measures time?

And do different experiences of time change how we relate to others?  Oliver Sacks observed people who's personal time frame is so slow that they can no longer meaningfully participate in society.  Do we all experience such time differences?  Do "A" type personalities experience time at a different rate than "B" types?  And what about the significance of objective time?  Should we consider people "rude" because they do not have as much of a grasp of objective time and so always run late?  And what about different cultures that treat time differently?  Is our relation to time primarily a cultural, societal experience?

Truth in the Library

When I introduce the parts of the library to my children as preschoolers I show them the basic sections: there is fiction, which is not true and non-fiction, which is true.  Of course, my statement is a lie, as are many things we tell preschoolers: babies appear in a mommy's tummy; the tooth fairy takes your teeth; the sky is green (don't you tell that to YOUR preschoolers?)  Anyway...

Non-fiction, of course, isn't true, in some ways.  There is a literature section of the Dewey Decimal Code (800s), which is as full of fictional narratives as the fiction section is.  And we have a lot of books which give, at best, spurious opinions-- political pundits, spiritual wackos, celebrity narratives-- which might give a version of the truth, but certainly are not completely true.

But what about other books on the shelves?  A self-help book is non-fiction, even though it won't actually help most of the people who read it.  A children's book about another nation can be misleading because it deals in such broad generalities.  And isn't that basically true about history?  If history is supposed to be a narrative about the past, then why does history need to be re-written by so many people with so many perspectives?  Isn't history just a fiction built up with facts?  The actual past is so complex it couldn't fit into a book.

And couldn't we say the same thing about almost any book?  It isn't actually the "truth" but it is a perspective on the truth.  Is there any kind of book that is actually "true"?

Of course, fiction has it's own kind of "truth", and it is simpler because we know the story isn't true.  Or at least most of it.  A lot of novels contain aspects of real people, especially autobiography.  But we don't concern ourselves with that kind of factual truth in fiction-- that's not the point.  The point is the narrative truth, the truth behind the details.

Is there any such thing as truth in details?  Or if we try to say anything about "facts" are we simply stating our opinion?  Certainly one opinion is better than another, suits the facts better than the other, but will we ever have enough information to make a determination of truth in any area?  One year eggs are good, the next they are bad, the next the egg whites are good and the next we are told its all good in moderation.  What about next year?  Will we ever discover truth, or is truth simply the opinion of the moment?

And there are truths from different points of view.  An ancient war looks very different from the winning general to a soldier on the losing side to the peasant who owned the land the battle was fought on.  Is there actually truth to be found, or only perspectives?  And we find that the more we talk about our memories, the more we rehearse them, the more they change.  So the memory we have today of an event yesterday isn't the memory we will have next week after we talked about it ten times.  Is next week's story as "true" as this weeks?  Is the imaginary event in the mind of the listener "true" at all?

Is there any such thing as truth?  And if there is, must it be so carefully worded as to be not worth listening to?  Are we better off just sticking with fiction because there we know what kind of truth we are dealing with?  Or should we not have a "fiction" and "non-fiction" sections in the library, but just a big sign over the door that says "OPINIONS"?