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[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

This is a discussion forum topic for the November 2022 Philosophy Book of the Month, In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All.


I don't believe time is real.

Correspondingly, I don't believe anything real is temporary.

I sometimes scratch at the surface of the eternal and real when I earnestly tell my children I will always love them.

We sometimes scratch at the surface of it when we talk about consciousness and presence, or in rougher words what we might describe as what makes the now now and what makes the here here, particularly in an apparently eternal spaceless timeless unchanging 4D spacetime that has no objective now, no objective simultaneity, and no objective time.



Please do reply with your comments and questions.


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[Alex Reeves]

Good day Scott. If nothing real is temporary, then life should not be real too, seemingly because it's temporary. Life and death happens for a period of time. If one lived fifty years and dies, can you say that his life wasn't real only because it was temporary. There are many other things that are temporary but are very very real. If nothing temporary is real, therefore there's nothing real in this world.

[Pauline Parnell]

I believe that time is a human construct. We use it to explain the process of human existence. Without it, our mind cannot understand, past, present and future. Human existence is real, however there is a temporal and a permanent aspect of it. Our living is temporal, however eternity beckons.

[Anna Hernandez 2]

I agree, 'time is not real'. Time is a measurement defined by humans to help define the world and universe in the terms of mathematics. Additionally, the definition of time is essential in answering the second part of your statement, as to whether 'nothing real is temporary'. Anything that is 'real' is created using energy, and under current scientific knowledge energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Thus, if something is 'real' its energy will live on forever, just as it has traveled from the past in various forms until it came to be the 'now'.

Just my take on it

[Donna Walker 1]

One of my favourite quotes on time;

"Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it." ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Closely followed by;

"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know." ~ Saint Augustine

It's such a difficult one to even ponder, and ironically while thinking about it, you're wasting it!

[trevorlando]

Ahhh finally, some other individuals who have also realized that time isn't real. These are just some of the constructs that we must live with and walk around with in everyday life. These sort of things act as a construct that we work the rest of our lives around. There are many things that are not real, yet we still must circle around them in order to function within both the world and a larger societal group. Although I know that time is merely something that someone has constructed and we must follow, so I try and follow these worldly regulations and follow them with a laugh. Most people take things far too seriously, especially when they are worried about things that are not real.

[Shondranika Ford]

Understandable. Things that are temporary age and disappear. The REAL stays regardless because it is spiritual without finite concepts.

[Owuamanam Eberechukwu]

This is similar to Plato's argument on dualism. I agree with you, sir. Nothing real is temporary.

[Hellen Muriithi]

The first part of this statement is a claim that time is not real. The way we experience time is actually just a subjective interpretation of how our brains process information, and there's no objective reality to it at all. The second part of this statement claims that anything that exists in this "real" world doesn't really exist for very long. This idea makes sense intuitively: if something exists for only a moment and then disappears forever, it doesn't seem like it would be worth anything. However, there are instances where these two ideas might contradict each other: if you have a moment of happiness or sadness, that moment may feel like something real to you and have lasting effects on your emotions and behavior. But if you have a similar moment in the future, do those memories still exist? In order for something to be "real," it must exist now—but it also needs to exist through time itself (or at least until something else replaces it).

[Hellen Muriithi]

I agree, 'time is not real'. Time is a measurement defined by humans to help define the world and universe in the terms of mathematics. Additionally, the definition of time is essential in answering the second part of your statement, as to whether 'nothing real is temporary'. Anything that is 'real' is created using energy, and under current scientific knowledge energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Thus, if something is 'real' its energy will live on forever, just as it has traveled from the past in various forms until it came to be the 'now'.

Just my take on it

Hi Anna, this is why I think that the concept of 'real' is an illusion, because there is nothing that can be 'created' or 'destroyed'. Energy simply moves from one form to another. The only thing that is 'real' is energy, and everything else is a manifestation of this energy. This means that you are real, and that I am real. We are all part of a 'now', which is made up of all the energy from the past we have experienced. And this 'now' is just one small part of an infinite series of 'nows'.

[Alice Fu]

I think that you bring up a really interesting concept here. Time is truly a human construct. It doesn't actually create much of an impact beyond helping humans reference events in space. Additionally, the idea of things being real or not is also a unique idea given the fact that everything disappears and is constantly being replaced by new things.

[OTrain M]

As much as time is a human construc, I believe it is real. I mean, by mere observation, the suns rises on the east and sets on the west. Between that, there is a space which we could explain as time. So it is real that a lot of changes takes place in between the rises of the sun and sets of the sun, if that makes sense. That is the definition of time. We grow, but what is wrong is thinking time is destination we all should to arrive at. Time is the the journey that we should take in and Marvel at as we are going in life. But, all in all, I believe time is real. We can't see it, but it is there, like gravity.

[Meghan Sica]

Time is beyond my comprehension. As I once read in another philosophical book, they described time as a pool, instead as we are taught from a young age it being linear. So all things exist simultaneously. I'm still trying to fully grasp the concept and the more I think about it, the more I believe it.

[Julie Gebrosky]

I think it’s clear that time is a human construct. My question comes from the claim that nothing temporary is real. As others have said, your life in this body on Earth is temporary. Does that mean this is not real? The car you drive won’t work forever. One day it will be scrapped and turned into something else. It’s still real in its car form. It can be reused and shaped, but does that make it not temporary? Hard to say. The same can be said with the food we eat and digest. It is burned as energy. The food was certainly real when we ate it though.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Good day Scott. If nothing real is temporary, then life should not be real too, seemingly because it's temporary. Life and death happens for a period of time.

Indeed. I believe there is an important sense in which one can truly say that both birth and death are illusions. That idea is explained in more detail in my other longer topic, Commentary on self-transcendence, ego death, and dying before you die; with a finger snap more brutal than Thanos.