Opinion/Editorial
ZERO POINT
Human beings tumble through life. Three described states of the universe, coupled with a species native ability to perceive them as what they are, assure that comprehension of reality remains a mystery. The past, the present and the future. Humans, and other animals, are possessed of the ability to know things of the past. Learning to survive is the causal force enabling the development of past retention through memory. Memories for all animal life have evolved through the millions of life experienced years of continuous existence on earth. The present is much more difficult to analyze from almost any perspective but our own. The present doesn’t really exist like the past or even the third prong of the existential triad. The present can be described as the instant of current existence, but that instant is subject to interpretation. Is the present one pico-second long, one microsecond or one second in length? A time period as long as a minute has, due to its length, a full element of the future within it. What is the present and how do we perceive it? The present is a zero point. In mathematics the past might be described as negative in number while the future would be positive. What is in between, a ‘resting’ area of almost no length, nearly no existence at all, is the zero point of the present. We ‘tumble’ through it, just like a diver somersaulting through the air on the way down to the water. The almost instant passing of scenery observed by the diver in short blinks of the eye while turning can be used to describe how we experience the present. It is gone before we recognize we are actually in it, yet by being so conscious and able to record the past in our survival driven memory we know we were there.
The future is even more problematic to describe in terms of what is perceived and experienced. Hunting animals, at most lower levels of animal existence, understand something of the future but most of their awareness of coming events is based upon memories of the past. Waiting for prey in just the right place is a valid example. Where is the prey most likely to appear? A hunting ground animal is likely to wait where there is water or a food source for prey. Humans are different. Humans view the future as the present they want to be in. Humans carefully and ornately plan for the coming of a future present that is tailored to specifications they spend hours, days, and years preparing for. Yet, the prepared for, prayed for and hoped for future never really arrives as the long, near permanent state of present expected.
Why do we expect the present to somehow be stretched into something it can never be?
Time is the subjective description applied to the process of what physicists call entropy of the universe. The universe appears to have sprung up from nothing, organized itself into solid states of being and, as soon as it was in such a state, began to decay back into nothingness. That is the current and best description, provided by the most intelligent humans on the planet, as to how life works. How we experience being a part of this currently expanding, but ever-dying, universe is through understanding our past, being aware of our fleeting present and ever preparing for the future. Humans have been dealing with this very difficult and very complex mess of barely understood principles since the dawn of known intellect among them. How is it possible to be intelligent and survive in any state of bliss when almost none of life’s existence seems to be understandable at all?
Humans have accommodated all of this by living in the future. Humans exist in the present and come from the past, but they live in the future. We live for the next vacation. Humans live for the coming raise or the promotion and, if those come, then for the next promotion or raise. Since the future is always right with us, just another blink ahead in our tumble through life, it remains the only place where our intelligent minds can find any solace at all. The people around that you may be with right now, if you are reading this among humans, are not really there at all if you consider how entropy, time and the present are perceived to work. Those humans, and other physical artifacts of life you see, hear, and possibly touch, are only defined to exist by the past, while passing fleetingly through your present, and might possibly be there in the future, although that result is always undetermined, until your eyes blink again while you ‘tumble’ in your dive.
