The modified time

[Nachtweide]

What changed the time, or the perception of time?
The term "time" plays an important role in Germany. This phenomenon can be seen for a few years in extreme form. The word "time" is everywhere, but it has changed. They used to say: I have time. Today we hear everywhere: Do not have time. Time is running out. Where the week go? No one has more time. I personally feel that time flies furiously, that I have no feeling for time. The difference, however: If I need time, I have a feeling I always have time or I'm time. People who do not have time to time looked very different: They take their time in the form of a whole (like a cake without parts). Now they put all these activities in a long time. Now they realize that the amount of activities, not this time, which applies to it only as a unit fit.
I think differently. Time is at present a cake with 24 parts. In each part fits into something. Most remains of any part of anything left, this is the time we have left. Time Did not you take your time. This is done in terms of removal or addition business.
Stress and anxiety changes the feeling of stress combines the time.
I realize that this feeling of time and the word time in recent years has become an important issue for the people. Frequency adjustments may have shown an effect?

Anne

 

[Psalehesost]

Perhaps you might find the thread on the book Momo interesting - it's a story in which certain forces manipulate the people of a city into "saving time", living a hectic life, and as a result they end up having no time at all.

At the simplest level, the story is interesting in that it depicts the way life in society has changed in the more recent decades, and people can recognize the effects of this change and so the message of the book. Then there may also be a deeper message, as discussed.

 

[abeofarrell]

In "In search of the miraculous" Ouspensky tied the sense of time flying by to entering into mechanized mode. He found that when he was correctly self-remembering then time slowed down, but when he forgot himself he would wake up as from a dream hours or days later with very little memories as time flew by. People today are more and more mechanized, automated, so they lose track of time. That plus the whole US mentality of "time is money". People value time less and value memories even less as they are mostly asleep.

 

[ScarletBegonias]

The sense of 'time' has really interested me over the years, maybe because I am an artist. When making art, I believe I am asleep and 'time' flies by amazingly fast. My students have also observed this "where did the time go?" sensation on numerous occasions while making art in my classroom.

It has been my understanding that this apparent loss of 'time' is because we are using our right brains when we are being creative. Here is a little info on that which has been summarized from my favorite beginning drawing book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain:

_http://drawsketch.about.com/od/suppliesbooks/fr/draw_right_side.htm

Right Brain VS Left Brain
In essence, the 'left brain' is logical, rational using words to describe concepts and able to manipulate abstract ideas, numbers and the concept of time. The right brain, in contrast, takes a wholistic approach, sensing relationships and patterns, tends to be intuitive and irrational, and has no sense of time.

 

[Nachtweide]

MOMO showed me at that time not only the manipulation of time but also the manipulation of free will. It probably plays no role in which form the manipulation works. But it would be an indication that this topic will be relevant years later.

 

[obyvatel]

General experience as well as scientific research show that time perception is linked with one's internal state. In low arousal (meaning low or absent readiness for physical action mediated by the fight or flight response governed by the sympathetic nervous system) conditions, if one's attention is completely occupied by some interesting activity, time perception slows down and one is surprised to see an hour has gone by looking at the external clock while the subjective feeling was only a few minutes. On the other hand, high arousal condition and stressful circumstances can cause the perception of time to speed up.

So there could be some correlation between increasing stress and anxiety levels in today's world and the feeling that "time is running out".

Here is one paper which deals with the relation between time perception and emotions.
http://itp.nyu.edu/~ad1790/filezzz/emotion-time.pdf

 

[kenlee]

I always thought of time in terms of the present moment that we 'feel' (or perhaps 'sense'?) or maybe both. It's like there are two things going on with our sense of time. There's a feeling of reality to it, a sense of actuality or of realness to it. The present moment passes but this sense of actuality, this 'realness,' continues thru to the next moment. I think something real is objectively going on behind it, and we feel it, but our perception of this realness is experienced subjectively depending on, perhaps, our psychological and physical states.

Going horizontally you have familiar 'time' that has a direction to it that points toward entropy. In this sense, I think, it's a kind of 'torture' (I know this only so well when I wake up in the morning every day with a bunch of aches and pains)! I think by itself time conditions us and limits what is possible.

Then there might be a line perpendicular to entropic time which connects these apparent disappearing moments into a linear timeline. I think this perpendicular line would point to a greater world of potential, meaning, ideas, archetypes, and so on. So the horizontal line of time 'exists' but its not real just by itself, in the sense that ideas and archetypes are real, without the perpendicular line of greater potential (eternity?) intersecting it and giving it its realness.

At the same time this perpendicular line of greater potential, although it's real, doesn't exist without the horizontal (entropic) line of time intersecting it and giving it it's existence. Then they come together in the present moment. As a result the transitory world of existing time now has the potential to become truly real and become 'realized'. This I was thinking is what we 'feel' in the present moment. This 'realness' is sensed and felt from these two lines coming together as our consciousness moves thru the existing timeline.

Then there's a tension between the two intersecting lines! We wanna escape this pathological, screwed up, tortuousness reality of time by escaping into the bliss of the eternal moment of ideas, archetypes, etc. via, lets say, by contemplation and meditation. But then this greater world can get too real also, too intense. So now we wanna escape this super intense 'blissful' eternal world of limitless potential by escaping back into the world of 'tortuous' time. We're caught between both! The only thing that I think can reconcile the two (so that we don't go all out bonkers!) is by finding a way to allow the creative force from the vertical creative world to freely flow thru us, unobstructed, into the horizontal world of time Just some ideas on this fwiw.

 

[NewOrleans]

Scarlett, I know the feeling. Somehow art - doing art and even seeing art - is also about experiencing time. When I'm drawing, Time doesn't stand still, it stretches out to infinity. It may be a very very very small sliver, but it's there. So when we see some ancient egyptian statue with refined features we are seeing the hand of that artisan thousands of years ago - that's Time captured in stone.

There's a great quote by Octavio Paz about art and time I'll have to locate for you.

 

[Zadius Sky]

Re: On Time Perception

This thread is a good discussion on the perception of time. I am currently reading Time Warped (2012) by Claudia Hammond (who is a host on BBC Radio 4), where she is focusing on a time perception from neuroscience/psychology perspectives. She is drawing the latest research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and biology along with interesting anecdotes.

She pointed out the central theme of this book is the fact that we are "creating our own perception of time, based on the neuronal activity in our brains with input from the physiological symptoms of our bodies...time is simply chemical, something created by neuronal activity in concert with the dopamine system (along with combinations of those four crucial areas of the brain - cerebellum, the basal ganglia, the frontal lobe and the anterior insular cortex - depending on the time-frames involved)." (89)

She also propagated a theory called the "Holiday Paradox," where she explains "the phenomenon...where holidays pass quickly, yet feel as though they lasted a long time afterwards" (7).

She goes further on that:

As we've seen, the passing of time is judged in two ways - prospectively, as it happens, and afterwards, retrospectively. When you judge time prospectively it is easy to see that, as I've been discussing, attention and emotion both play a part; but when you look retrospectively and try to guess how long an event took, it is a third factor that shapes your answer - memory. This difference between prospective and retrospective time estimation is very significant, and one that provides solutions to many of time's mysteries. It gives rise to the phenomenon I've dubbed the "Holiday Paradox." This is the common experience of a holiday appearing to go fast at the time, but when you look back afterwards it feels as though you were away for ages.

[...]

You are left with two simultaneous yet contradictory experiences of time...Memories and markers in time are two key elements of the way we experience time. Holidays provide the perfect conditions for time to pass quickly - disruption to a daily routine and the removal of cues to the hours passing, combined with a host of new sights and sounds to absorb the attention. The days appear to fly by. When you get home the other key element comes into play - memory. The reason you feel as though you've been away for ages is that so many new things have happened that you have far more new memories than in a normal week, warping your standard mental measurement of time. It is my contention that the Holiday Paradox is caused by the fact that we view time in our minds in two very different ways - prospectively and retrospectively.

Prospectively and retrospectively made me think of them being a part of System 1 versus System 2.

Below is the basic list of two different of time perceptions (slowing down and speeding up) as discussed in this book:

Time Slowing Down:

- Hot Temperature
- Fast heart rate (pulse)
- Novelty (new experiences)
- Paying attention
- Negative emotions (anxiety, fear, misery, depression, etc.)
- Feeling of Rejection (when people dislike you, it can alter your perception of time) - this causes us to focus on our shortcomings and ourselves.
- Being "shocked" or surprised.
- Youth
- Hyperactive (i.e., ADHD as "time disorder")
- Boredom
- Isolation
- Uncertainty
- Watching the minute passing by

Time Speeding Up:

- Cold Temperature
- Slow heart rate (pulse)
- Routine (daily life)
- Pleasure (relaxation, social interactions, creativity, etc.)
- Meditation
- As you get older ("years flashing by") - Autobiographical memory
- Watching TV (or dissociation) / distraction
- Avoid looking at your watch

She pointed out that those with dyslexia have a trouble with experiencing the passing of time (i.e, being late) and those with schizophrenia have trouble with maintaining three time-frames (past, present, future) to which they tend to lose a fire sense of reality.

She also pointed out an interesting bias: fading-effect bias, where "discussing an incident from the past has a different impact on that memory, depending on whether it was good or bad...so every time you talk about the good old days you relive that memory and the warm feelings that accompanied it, but with the exception of the extreme case of post-traumatic stress disorder, unhappy events gradually lose their power the more we talk about them. This allows us to cope and move on. We even remember successes has having taken place more recently and embarrassments as more distant in the past, as though time warps to protect our self-esteem" (169-70). This can be applied to the Work, where it takes longer to process any negative events in our memories.

It's an interesting reading on the subject, fwiw.

 

[Gawan]

Thanks for the further input Zadius.

Something similar happened to me some weeks ago where I thought about a previous holiday trip and assumed it were two weeks and then I checked the dates and well, it was only one week ;).

It is also interesting that meditation seems to "speed up" time.

She also pointed out an interesting bias: fading-effect bias, where "discussing an incident from the past has a different impact on that memory, depending on whether it was good or bad...so every time you talk about the good old days you relive that memory and the warm feelings that accompanied it, but with the exception of the extreme case of post-traumatic stress disorder, unhappy events gradually lose their power the more we talk about them. This allows us to cope and move on.

This reminds me of Wilsons book Redirect in two ways: On the one hand that time itself doesn't heal wounds and on the other that writing exercises also not directly after an incident but a bit later on do help or relieve, though I cannot remember how much later on a story editing approach is recommended.