Is it just me or is time accelerating?

[Kresge'slastBB]

As I get older, it seems like time is flying by and in passing discussions, I'm not the only one with that perception. I have a theory that the older you get, the more memories you have behind you to draw on, therefore making time seem as if it has passed more rapidly. Depending on the type of memories and the emotions attached to them, some things even many years ago may seem like just yesterday. The more of those you have, the faster time seems to have gone by...

Like I said before, most people will not remember exactly what you said, or what you did, but they will never forget the way made them feel. To me, this means that memories are strongest when tied to heightened emotions...

Apart from that, there is something else going on because for me, the past 4 or 5 years have simply flown by like a rocket. There have been some great times, but for the most part the past few years have been really benign, yet they still flew by. Anyone else have a theory?

[Bill Glasheen]

You are indeed on to something.

There's no point in me going into the detail when others have articulated it very well. You may be interested in this book. It covers many of the issues you have brought up in your post.



Training the Time Sense: Hypnotic & Conditioning Approaches

As for the ability to remember, there is a neurohormonal component to that. Back in my earlier days, folks used to talk about being able to remember where they were when JFK was shot. Then it was the explosion of the space shuttle. These mechanisms are there to help superglue extremely important events and situations into our psyche. You want to remember what things you were doing when schit came down - so you will avoid that situation in the future. It's a self-preservation phenomenon.

- Bill

[Kresge'slastBB]

Great! Thanks for the information. I'll look into it.

The perception of time as it pertains to different events is interesting. For some, time seems to slow down in life and death situations. I saw an interview with a boy who'd been attacked by a shark, he said things got quiet and time stood still. Happy times seem to pass too fast, boring times seem to last forever (in the middle of them anyway). We used to train to "think slow" while sparring rather than speed up. That was great.

[Bill Glasheen]

What you are talking about with the shark attack (life-threatening event) and the training for sparring is a concept called tachypsychia. Tachy = rapid; psychia = thinking. Basically the brain works like a camera operating much faster than the normal sampling rate (NTSC standard = 30 frames per second) so that things can be displayed in slo-mo. Again, this is a survival mechanism. Learning how to tap into that is an extraordinary and rare ability.

The old slo-mo sequences in the Kung Fu series were more than cinematic license (and technique to hide David Carradine's lack of martial ability). They were an attempt to re-create the tachypsychia phenomenon.

There is debate about whether or not tachypsychia actually causes time to slow down (for the participant) DURING the event. One theory is that life-threatening events cause us to lay down richer and denser memories, thus causing us to remember an event as if time was slower. This same theory explains the childhood vs. older age time distortion. Children see everything as new, so lay down richer memories. Older people have seen it all, and so lay down a smaller set. At the end of a time period, the person who has seen it all thinks that time flew by more quickly.

- Bill

[f.Channell]

Time is something which I don't think we understand on any level.
We divide it into 24 hours, 365 days etc... But how did they judge it prior to the Mesopotamian/Egyptian cultures who created it. When God created the world in a certain number of days, how long were the days? (to borrow from the Scopes case defense).
Does time differ from child to adult? They seem to change and grow more rapidly.
If you look at a photo from 2 months ago it is a moment just as far gone as one from 100 years ago. Humans whole existence is just a speck of time in comparison to Earths time.

With life changing important events such as September 11th I wonder if the way I felt was just how people felt when they heard Fort Sumter was fired upon, did they feel the same emotion. Is that sensation then timeless?

F.

[Bill Glasheen]

Einstein and Vonnegut are two of my favorites. And each in his own way viewed points in time as places and not as the constant-interval continuum most humans recognize.

• Einstein of course is famous for his (now proven) theories of relativity that demonstrate the relationship between time and velocity.
• Vonnegut is well-known for a body of science fiction literature. But he's best known in popular literature (and film) for his book Slaughterhouse Five. In that book, Billy Pilgrim becomes "unstuck in time", and lives his life in a relatively random order.
  
  As for the film... My adolescent brain still remembers the topless Valerie Perrine. Talk about cementing memories...

Good stuff!

- Bill

[Kresge'slastBB]

Great comments! This is exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping to spark. Thank you.

[f.Channell]

I'll have to check out that movie, don't remember seeing it.

Of course Back to the Future was an interesting yet humorous look at time.

The worlds only steam clock
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89j8aJBIU2U

F.

[Jason Rees]

Slaughterhouse Five was a very odd book. I still haven't decided whether I liked it or not, but yeah, random sequencing, aliens, conspiracies, anti-war vignettes... it had just about everything.

[Bill Glasheen]

Jason

You have to read a number of Vonnegut books to appreciate the witch's brew of then-contemporary issues he tackled via the medium of science fiction. Remember that his career came on the tail end of Star Trek, concerns about overpopulation, the Vietnam War, birth control and free love, big brother vs. personal freedom, euthanasia, etc.

The first book I read by him was Welcome to the Monkey House - a rich collection of short stories dealing with many social issues. The feature short story was about a most odd form of birth control applied to zoo monkey houses (to keep them from masturbating in front of zoo guests) and subsequently forced on a society to control overpopulation. Of course there were libertarian-minded individuals who chose to break big brother's rules...

Vonnegut - like many authors - recycled a lot of material in his various books. But the collection is an interesting one. Slaughterhouse Five is to some extent one of his best, and deals with many themes from his previous books.

- Bill