Gabor Szendi:
Time which in fact does not exist

There is no past, which may be painful, only fear and desire conjugated in future tense. Time is a linguistic invention. The more developed a society is, the more complicated tenses it uses. Probably mankind only invented time to have something to complain about.

 

 

While looking at the watch or the calendar, exploring our memories, or planning our holidays we firmly believe that time exists. After all we were born some time in the past, are getting older and are going to die some time in the future. Looking at photos, reading old letters, listening to recollections, watching our children growing up we sadly conclude that life is flying by. In our childhood it took us so long until the next summer holiday or Christmas, as young lovers we could hardly wait to see each other, but as our hair is turning frosty , we can't help watching in despair how fast months and years rush by. Time irrefutably exists, or at least that's what we obstinately believe.

Clive Wearing, a musicologist , conductor, tenor and keyboardist contracted herpesviral encephalitis in 1985, which completely destroyed his hippocampus on the left side and damaged the one on the right, as well. Wearing suffers from retrograde and anterograde amnesia, which means he has neither past nor new memories. He is only able to grasp a few seconds from his life, but his semantic memory functions well and enables him to recall the knowledge he acquired before his illness.

When he is asked if he knows a certain piano piece, he is able to say a lot about it and its composer. When he is asked if he could play it, he would say he has never played it before. When he is seated at the piano, after the first notes he would play it perfectly from memory, but 20 seconds later he will forget that he has just played. He is as much in love with his wife as he used to be before his illness struck. For him time does not exist, his emotions can't be dulled by routine or boredom. Every time his wife is out of the room for more than half a minute, he greets her so joyously as if they have not seen each other for weeks. (Wearing is staying at an institute and his wife often visits him.) For Wearing time has seized to exist. His body is getting older but time has stopped for him. And since the true essence of time is its passing nature, time which has stopped is no time any more.

Wearing's story proves that time as such does not exist. Time is a human invention. There is no time for animals, either. Just like Wearing they are enclosed in the eternal present. After a while they certainly learn what is good and what is wrong for them, what to be afraid of and what to like. But they have no ego and autobiographic memory, which is also true for Wearing who is not able to place his own knowledge onto an imaginary time axis, either.

Do feral children abandoned in forests, raised by animals have an experience of time? Most probably they don't, in much the same way as animals. Only the good and the bad exist.

Time perception is bound to language. In our culture children at an early age don't have a concept of time, they can't put their memories in sequence. It's not surprising, since for quite a long time they don't even have a sense of self: When they speak about themselves they use second person singular pronouns instead of "I" or "me": If the self has no sense of existence, it cannot have a history of existence, either. As long as there is no speech, there are no memories, either. To be able to travel mentally one needs to experience memories in succession. Children gradually learn from adults how to speak about their own selves and how to place their memories on a time scale. Past, present and future are merely linguistic inventions. Remembering is the basis of time experience. The more developed a culture is, the more complex tenses the language is able to express: starting in the past and continuing in the present, future continuous, present perfect, past perfect, etc. That's why we do suffer a lot when we learn new languages. However, in the Atlas of the World Languages there are 88 languages listed which don't have past tenses, and 80 without future tenses. How difficult it would be if we could not use tenses anymore and couldn't describe that something has already happened, is happening at the moment or will be happening.

We invented time, because as the human world was getting more and more complicated, the ability to organize the events of our individual life, relationships or the history of the tribe into a chronological order became extremely beneficial. To describe the world accurately, it is essential to include what happened and when, what was earlier and what was later. What is the cause and what is the effect. We invented time, but now we are suffering from its consequences.

When brain researchers were studying the brain to find out what was going on during the recollection of past, present and future events, they were surprised to find that nearly the same cerebral areas became activated in all the three tenses. Which means that in the brain there is only one tense, the present tense. When we recall a past event, our brain experiences the "past" here and now. Rather than recalling, the brain reconstructs past events from the stored data as present experiences . When we imagine future events, our brain creates an event from the data stored in our memory but we experience future here and now. Emotions, vegetative reactions are always in the present.

If there is nothing else but present tense, and everything else is a linguistic virtuosity, the consequences can be far-reaching with regard to psychotherapy or the functioning of human beings.

It is a generally accepted dogma, that we are determined by past events. Therapists spend a huge amount of time on discovering past "causes" and people in general tend to investigate their past. They are searching the past for explanations, how and why their lives turned out the way it did, what made them unhappy. Quite a few people are disappointed with the result of their search, since even if they follow the explanations of their therapists or their psychology books and discover the alleged or actual damages shaping their destiny - it won't change anything for the better.

Let's say that someone suffers from anxiety or develops a panic attack in certain situations. The past searching mind stumbles upon an event which can offer some sort of explanation for the present feelings of anxiety, so the presumption is ready: this and this is responsible for the anxiety. However, this is merely a theory which is impossible to verify, since there are quite a few other people who experienced similar trauma but did not develop anxiety by their adulthood.

As a matter of fact, since memory is limited, it is arbitrary to pick only from the recallable memories and only the ones which best "fit" the anxiety. What if the anxiety was caused by such a fearful event that makes it impossible to recall? It is a well-known phenomenon that a lot of traumatic events will be erased from the memory once and for all - as a kind of self-defence. We also know that the reason for several adult problems is not what actually did happen but what did not happen. Something that memory cannot grasp. For example if somebody as a child never felt being loved. "Not being loved" has no story.

But let's get back to what we said earlier about the brain functioning always in the present tense. If "past" is painful and evokes anxiety, then past is - in reality - an ongoing thought here and now which causes pain and anxiety here and now. What's more, maybe there is no memory at all, only depression and a feeling of worthlessness. What's the point then in talking in the past tense, producing shaky theories when things are going on in the present? Our concept of time deceives us. Based on the principle of cause and effect we tend to think that if something hurts in the present it must have been caused by an event that happened earlier. However, if we accept that brain-functioning takes place in the present, and we switch off "time" accordingly, then we can say: If it hurts now, then something must be going on now in our soul (mind) which brings about the pain. And then that is we need to deal with. We should do something which helps to ease the actual anxiety.

X. for instance is horrified of public speaking, for fear that everybody will see him trembling and with sweat running down his forehead. He can go on for hours listing the cases since his childhood when he had to suffer total humiliation because of this deficiency. We suggest him that before he starts speaking he should tell the audience he will be trembling and sweating. His problem will disappear, because he will no longer be afraid of the exposure. Were we interested in the past grievances? No, we weren't, because they only served to give an explanation.

But the situation is the same with the future. Future does not exist, only present events placed in the future in our imagination. Our images about the future and the image generated fears are also in the present. If we learn to think always in the present tense, the frightening future will be dispelled.

If we have to go over a precipice, we might frighten ourselves imagining how we are going to fall down, but we might concentrate on the very next step instead, and alas, there we are, we have come across. The road leading to future consists of present minutes. Georges Blind, a Member of the French Resistance was smiling when he was executed in 1944. The present empowered him and he was able not to deal with the future. With his smile he defeated the firing squad. Survivors of life-endangering situations said they had only been able to survive because they excluded the paralyzing future images from their mind and solely concentrated on the possible ways of escape.

If we can get rid of the shadows of our past and our fears projected in the future all of a sudden we will become free. Obviously past will leave its mark on us, our personal stories will be preserved, printed in our mentality, personality or habits. But we'll have nothing to do with those events no more existent, it will be enough to be concerned with the effects which are still with us. Past cannot be rewritten, but present can. We can decide any time to be different from now on. And this will change the future - if future as such exists at all.