Can you sense its changes or do you think of time as something that always seems the same, i.e. every second/minute/hour is the same subjective length of time.
How do you perceive time?
Can you sense its changes or do you think of time as something that always seems the same, i.e. every second/minute/hour is the same subjective length of time.
seconds are a bit fine-grained but i voted with the spirit of the poll.
Yeah I agree, the gist is like 5 minutes and up.
Time is fully subjective to me, it's why I simultaneously can understand why people are upset when I'm late and also not be able to actually be on time
Somehow I manage to be on time even when I do not give myself enough time. I go into "the zone" and bend it. At least that is what my friends and I call it. I am likely to call someone close to me panicking about being late and they will just tell me to calm down and bend time. That is all I need to hear. I hang up and go into the zone, which allows me to quickly filter out the obstacles and routes that would make me late. I usually arrive with a couple minutes to spare. If I am late it is not by much and if I can't get there on time I will call and let them know I am going to be late, so I don't stress about it.Originally Posted by Reficulris
“My typology is . . . not in any sense to stick labels on people at first sight. It is not a physiognomy and not an anthropological system, but a critical psychology dealing with the organization and delimitation of psychic processes that can be shown to be typical.” —C.G. Jung
Time seems to drag on. It is painful sometimes, but I know I should appreciate it because I won't live forever. To kill the time, I like to distract myself with things to do or with pleasures. A pleasurable life is a happy one. I could make better use of my time.
Time does feel different when I'm in the "zone" or experiencing "flow". Like some matrix shit.
Ah! You too! Finally.
Time is an illusion... it only matters what you are doing in the moment. That's why you can think of something that happened a long time ago but "feels like only yesterday" but you are doing a task and it takes forever.
Also time is integrated with motion, space and physical reality. Thinking of time in a vacuum often makes it go by very fast, while - enjoying the moment fully and keeping busy, you make it slow way down. And the perception of it passing is incredibly relative and subjective.
AFAIK variations in perception of time is in part dependent on one's level of psychological flow
And then there are the things that happened yesterday that feel like took place ages ago
Enneagram: 9w1 6w5 2w3 so/sx
"Time" is an attempt at trying to make an objective measurement of movement in a relativistic world. One second is really relative to the movement of the item being used as the basic "time reference".
Applying an objective measure of time to our subjective experience is nonsensical. Our entire lives are relative to our accumulation of experiences, ideas etc. One hour driving a road you've never driven before vs one hour driving the same old road you drive every day. Time passes subjectively slow or fast depending on how novel your consciousness is.
day is a day is a week is a month is a year is a lifetime. it's cyclical bro.
I'm partial to the zone/flow experience of time but I also notice once a blue moon that my day can go really rapidly for no reason.
Fragments of memory/perception/information in a whirlwind. I experience time as a holistic visual collage of present/past/future.
But if you want to discuss the subjective experience of time passing fast/slow, it depends.
I don't think time is the same, I think it changes, however I am unsure whether I am so sensitive and aware of those changes, I am just sure they are there, but most of them is probably beyond our conscious.
It’s just a unscientific, useless ramble.
I remember my teacher reading us this story ‚An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge‘ before he released us for summer holidays. He sat there and read and read for a while until he reached the final sentence. It was suprising at first, until you understood that the events unfolding in the second part of the story actually happened in a flash of time, actually in a much shorter time frame than the 2nd part ecompassed. There were 3 different levels to the story: you had the time it takes to read it (/the time that passed in your reality), the time that passed in Farquhars imaginated reality and the time that has actual passed in the physical reality during his imagining. I think the story contrasted the physical objective reality [1] with the the subjective psychological reality [2] of time.
‚entire lives could be lived between the seconds that ticked on a clock in the real world‘[1]‚the last firing of a neuron, an event that set a soul loose from time and space, a prisoner of whatever last thought or fragment of thought‘
I read in one instincts thread about how self preservational instinct sees time as a resource. Everbody knows they are not going to live forever. Means you only have a limited amount of time here. Now that’s your quantitative time. Your time measured in seconds, minutes, hours, years. For me time measured has a ruthless/burdensome feel to it at times. When time has passed in the physical real world, it is gone and time measured is a reminder of how it is irretrievably gone. In this reality it’s not like you can physically travel back to your past or future.SP Instinct
~awareness of "chronos" time (clock time, quantitative time); "crisper about deadlines"
~time as a resource: how you use it, accounting for it
~when rigid or anxious about this instinct, there can be a sense of chronos time being scarce, time always running out
[2]
In your mind you are free from the restrictions, that the physical reality of time imposes on you. In the physical world the past is sth. that has already happened and is gone, present is now and future hasn’t happened yet. Even though time is flowing like a river you cannot break the veil that seperates the past, present and future. You are not able to physically experience your future. In your mind though, future, past and present can coexist. Present can be next to past, past can be next to future. The things that I perceive in my present, can influence how I view memories of my past. Things stored from my past can influence my present state, which can influence the way how project myself into the future. It’s the ever shifting, ever complex form in your mind. In your mind you can enter states, where you feel like time doesn’t exist. In experiencing flow, past, future, the passing of real physical time, just don’t carry that much weight, because you are so engrossed, so on another plane of existence, time is passing/flowing, but you are centered and still (in your zone).
I remember n0ki/zap posted a link to this article on how different cultures view time. Which made me wonder how much can the way how you perceive time, influence the way how you perceive life. I mean like this chapter in 'The Unbearable Lightness Of Being'. It was sth. along the lines how we only have one life. We cannot compare our life’s experience to anything, because there is no context no life after this one and no life before this one. And then you have the circular perception of time.
“If I had known then what I know now, I would never have done what I did?” well isn’t that the core of a lot of life ruminations. If I could go back in time with the knowledge I have now, would I do it differently? Now you can’t, because like I said physical reality of time is a bitch. But the psychological, subjective reality not necessarily. Now thinking about that, the saying of history repeats itself came into my mind and how humans don’t learn from history. I mean isn’t that the point of reading, literature, films, studying what has been there before, understanding, passing things on, in the hope that knowledge penetrates the veil between the past and present and makes it into a hopefully better future? Things might not repeat themselves exactly. Same, Same but different. But maybe there are general themes, general truths about human nature. Like you are broadening your mind, beyond your present, limited singular human experience, to give you context, access to more. You didn’t have a life before this, but there have been people living before you. People who have written, created and reflected. Isn’t that what’s all about the friction between the past, the present and the future? I mean, what would I have done in the past with the knowledge of my present, how would I view my present, if I would now what would happen in the future?Asians do not see time as racing away unutilized in a linear future, but coming around again in a circle, where the same opportunities, risks and dangers will re- present themselves when people are so many days, weeks or months wiser. As proof of the veracity of the cyclical nature of time, how often do we (in the West) say, “If I had known then what I know now, I would never have done what I did?”
Last edited by Moonbeaux Rainfox; 03-28-2016 at 09:45 PM.
Pieces to the perception of time, which I would note is not *actual* time:
The mind (I claim *the* mind, but it comes from observing *my* mind) has natural abilities to track time, and I haven’t really gotten to the bottom of all of them. Humans, I would note, are not unique in this—most lifeforms seem to have some ability to track time, probably using input like the light (time of day, day or night), the stars, the seasons, how much something like an odor has faded, etc. But more importantly, there is an internal rhythm to life, that seems to go beyond relying on external cues… Inside, one is “counting time,” although of course you won’t be aware of the internal clock necessarily. So I guess there’s a complex combination of using external cues and an internal rhythm/clock that arises out of some ancient area of the brain as well as out of all the cycles and processes in the body (which I guess might all be largely governed by the brain anyway or even might reference off of other lifeforms, except for how plants seem to track time in their way too without even having a nervous system).
I know there’s an internal clock, because no matter how fast or slow time is passing, I can still guess what time it actually is. So my experience is feeling the flow of time, but something else is actually “counting” it in a fairly accurate way—again some ancient/old thing in my brain. As for the experience of time, I can slow it, speed it up, or escape it entirely. I think the escaping it part is where you can actually lose track of time, and I’m not sure it’s entirely healthy really. There’s a way to be “in the zone” without compromising your awareness, and there’s a way to seek oblivion where that awareness is lost. The latter tendency is self-destructive. I think the ability to freeze time (in your experience) can come with heightened mindfulness, and I haven’t been meditating to grow my mindfulness.
So really the feel of the flow of time *does* come down to a certain sort of mindfulness. Memory plays a role as well, although memory often reflects mindfulness. With poor mindfulness, memory is also poor. Keen memory allows you to feel backward in time through your memories and how each event flowed into the next, which allows the projection of future events, as you follow these flows. This piece, imo, may well be related to the IME. This allows for one to feel supremely oriented in time at all times. If memory is compromised, so is the ability to orient oneself.
Then there is *actual* time—the great mystery. Everything I’ve mentioned so far just arises out of a construct of time that is rooted in our biology, arising out of the organisms we descended from. There is at least one ancient construct of time going on in the lifeforms on earth, and we inherited it. But it’s just an attempt to gauge what we need to survive.
*Actual* time:
Only with profound imagination and insight do we begin to glimpse what time *really* is, and I’m afraid I’m just not glimpsing it at the moment. But I can say I’m certainly excited about the universe right now. Maybe any lifeform would measure time by a similar construct, and I’d love to see life on another world and look at that construct. Maybe the construct is like a barcode that you can actually figure out the place a lifeform originates from using, but the overall theme of these constructs would be largely the same for us 3d creatures who travel through time as though it’s a journey, who feel the “whens” but can’t so much *see* them.
Anyway, I personally relate to really deeply feeling time, and changes in its flow alert me to when “something is unusual or not right.” It’s probably more that I’m following my consciousness and its flow (which is felt as “time”). I experience life as everything moving at different rates all the time, everything is always "in process." My mind follows the rates along (and estimates when they might slow or still or accelerate or whatever) with often very little external input. But I will revisit all of it, to make sure I'm still up to date on the rate and where that thing is now. A potential cognitive bias that arises out of this is tending to view things as "in progress" while others think they're at a standstill. For instance, I may have done nothing regarding some task, but I will feel it is "in progress," mainly because my mind is orienting to it, preparing to execute it suddenly, when it comes to a head in my mind at last. This can annoy other people, which is why I prefer to answer to no one.
Last edited by marooned; 09-16-2015 at 06:40 PM.
We perceive time in terms of seconds -- the length of a heartbeat. We can't even imagine events that unfold over several days and years or be aware of elementary particles that flash into existence for less than a billionth of a second without high-tech camera equipment and exceptional filming techniques.
This is presented in a way that even a child can understand it. I actually liked it.
“My typology is . . . not in any sense to stick labels on people at first sight. It is not a physiognomy and not an anthropological system, but a critical psychology dealing with the organization and delimitation of psychic processes that can be shown to be typical.” —C.G. Jung
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