The
following post is a (hopefully) poetical and playful but by no means claiming to be an accurate portrayal of Julian Barbour's concept of
Platonia.
I have stumbled upon this stunning idea of the possible
nonexistence of the time dimension while reading Adam Frank's book
About Time (review of which is upcoming).
Oh
Platonia,
I
wish to apply for acceptance and citizenship in your beautiful and
expansive country at the crossroads of philosophy and quantum
mechanics where time is not relative but immaterial and pointless.
I
want to bathe and immerse myself in your endless stream of Now and to
enjoy the many individual and encapsulated moments that give our
minds the persistent and pervasive illusion of time.
Our
current way of life needs to finally embrace the eternal present, the
uniqueness of each current state of our lives. We need to throw away our electronic gadgets that continuously mock and enslave us with their
digital counter-face.
No
better time than Now! In your eyes, dear Platonia, the cat that jumps
is different from the one that lands. Our brain fools us into seeing
an imaginary and arbitrary relationship between causes and effects,
when in reality there is neither. The “me” of the past is not the
“me” of the present.
Thank
you, dear Platonia, for making me see the errors of my entrenched
ways and for removing the shackles of my past with the burden of my
old but completely unreal selves. Now you have made me truly free to
roam wherever I please.
Why
worry about the future when it will never come? Tomorrow is a vacant
idea; it is an abstract lie we try to convince ourselves of despite
its many global features of make-believe and fantasy. In fact,
whatever is necessary needs to happen now, both joy and suffering
make their impact and presence known only in the moments of the
eternal and paradoxically timeless present. No other moment for
change and realization than the fumes of the here and now since in
your eyes, tomorrow is a thing of the past and yesterday will never
come!
Remember,
Platonia that you owe your name to the great and illustrious
philosopher-poet Plato who saw and wrote about your beautiful eternal
face from the caves of human consciousness.
You
are perfectly aware of the fact that we are created anew each moment,
that the mystics have always been right since we need to live right
here and right now. Incidentally, we may think we are aging but that
is only the perception of our fragile shell. How could we age and die
if time is nothing but an illusion and does not exist?
Platonia,
do you agree with Heraclitus that no one ever enters the same river
twice? I believe both yes and no. Certainly, the river has changed,
and so has the person. But after all, is change not another illusion,
the supposed comparison between now and then?
The
notion of a previous river is part of our common human-fold delusion
because neither the river nor the person can have possibly existed in
the past. Every now is a new creation, an unrelated and gratuitous
moment-to-moment mystery, a blessing and the miracle of existence!
No
two moments can ever be the same, nor can they ever be compared to
each other because they do not exist separately. This is all there is
to it, and Descartes needs an amendment. He ought to be rephrased as
I am thinking, therefore I
am and exist right now.
Nonetheless, there is no positive correlation between the previous and the current
voice of this mysterious “I” in my head.
So
there you have it. I am shedding this time-conscious and time-bound
illusion, or rather delusion, of my so-called unified personality as imagined on the time-spectrum. I shall exist fully, completely and
wholeheartedly in this very moment, the ever-present magical act of
creation, the beauty and wonder that exists, that has ever existed
and will never perish nor decay.
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