Uninteresting Musings

All this morning my mind has been preoccupied with the notion of time again.  I was specifically pondering the concept of future.  We often suppose that the idea of predestination precludes the possibility of free will.  If it is written then what real choice do we have, and yet history is littered with predictions and visions.  If time is not written there is nothing to see beyond the moment and if time is not recorded than there is nothing to look back on except memory.

An idea suddenly occurred to me that perhaps time and even mortality are not really the problem, but instead symptoms of something bigger, linearity.  Our entire lives our governed by linearity and its manifestation as order.  Words follow single file to form sentences, like footsteps that comprise a journey.  We experience life in a single file arrangement of moments.  Rob yourself of all your worldly senses and you will find that you have little left with which to distinguish the idea of "now" from "then" or even "soon".

If our eyes could see only black and white, color would still be present.  The mind is limited by the means in which it has for receiving input.  Time however is a concept and not necessarily limited by a physical input.  The Greeks had two words for time chronos, which refers to the idea of sequential time, and kairos which refers to a qualitative period of undetermined time.

In the New Testament of the Bible kairos is referred to as "the appointed time in the purpose of God" or the time when God acts.  In the Catholic church the words, "Kairos tou poiesai to Kyrio" are recited before the Divine Liturgy, which means "It is time for the Lord to act" and is used to indicate that the time of the liturgy intersects with eternity.  As far back as Aristotle man has felt the need separate the distinctions of time to make absolutely clear that traditional linear concept was not the intended meaning.

If we remove the idea of linearity from time and assume for the moment that everything has happened, is happening, and will happen at once then perhaps destiny does not preclude free will.  We ourselves have the choices and are making the choices.  When an author writes a book he is choosing the words and order, and yet when he reads his book he is following his story in a linear fashion.  It isn't that he cannot choose what his characters will do next, its that he has already chosen.

I doubt that anyone else will find any of my thoughts of any significant interest, but perhaps they will provide some comfort when I reflect on them later.  There are moments when I feel so close understanding something  I can't explain, and then suddenly its gone.