Life - A Blur at the Speed of Light 2-12-10

Anderson, South Carolina

The nearest spiral galaxy to earth is the Andromeda Galaxy, located some 2.5 million light years from us. The distance is so vast that light travelling at 186,000 miles per second takes two and a half million years to traverse the span between Earth and Andromeda. The image of Andromeda we see in the night sky is how the galaxy appeared millions of years ago. It is most likely that some of the stars we ‘see’ have since exploded into stellar novae and no longer exist. No one turned off the light headed our way.

About 6,500 BC a star in the constellation of Taurus exploded in a fiery nuclear death. More than seven thousand years later this fact made itself evident in the skies above earth. In the year 1054 AD, sometime in late April or early May, Chinese and Arab astronomers reported the sudden appearance of a strange object in the sky, increasing in brightness until July, when it was brighter than anything in the sky except the moon. It was so bright as to be visible at mid day. Today the inconceivably beautiful filaments of this star are known as the Crab Nebula.

A rather curious property of the universe is the compression of time that occurs when the observer travels at near light speed. The mathematics describing general relativity and specific aspects of quantum mechanics suggest that someone travelling at the speed of light to the Andromeda galaxy would only age 54 years. If one is willing to make a speed of light journey to Andromeda and back, one would have aged ‘only’ 108 years. For the rest of us, 50,000 centuries would have come and gone during your interstellar voyages. Don’t plan on anyone leaving the light on for you.

A good friend of mine once made the acerbic observation that he saw his son as a two-year old infant and then suddenly he had graduated from university. Everything in between was lost in a blur. He wondered out loud what happened. He went on to berate himself for having worked impossible hours for thirty six years in a little windowless cell of an office in a textile plant and having missed the biggest chunk of his son’s life. My friend was in essence moving at the speed of light, chasing the mirage of material satisfaction; collecting houses, cars, commercial buildings, and too few images of what really mattered. Moving so fast towards material success, time nearly stood still for my friend, while time moved forward for the rest of the universe in normal fashion. Years later those possessions are sources of great stress and challenge.

His son went on to launch a spectacularly successful career in management, only to be sucked into the black hole of alcoholism, fueled by an unrequited anger. At age 36, his pancreas did the same thing as the exploding progenitor star in the Crab Nebula. A father watched his son die in the garden at his lake house. Suddenly, all the resources in the universe meant nothing. The filaments of that explosion have rippled through nearby lives for nearly a decade.

Science fiction writers for decades have fantasized over the possibilities of travelling at or beyond the speed of light. What they don’t usually do is focus on the liabilities of doing so. The smart people doing physics for a living have pretty good evidence to suggest that travelling at the speed of light is going to result in missing out on a lot of what really matters in life.

The American culture is a bit like an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction without any control rods to slow it down. In a certain sense American life and economics are dependent on an ever increasing rate of expansion and consumption. The reality is these increasing rates of expansion are simply not sustainable. Like the progenitor star that created the Crab Nebula, we are imploding in ever increasing numbers. Millions of families are shattering from divorce. Ever greater numbers are caught up in using the fissile materials of alcohol and drugs. Millions work frantic hours in high stress jobs to earn more so they can spend more. Millions more are being rendered homeless in their breakneck efforts to outspend and outlive those around them. One third of home owners are ‘under water’, they owe more than they are worth. Millions are fleeing the explosion of debt that has welled up around them, causing filaments of foreclosure and homelessness to spread across the land. Unlike the inconceivably beautiful filaments of the Crab Nebula, there is nothing beautiful about the carnage taking place around us, here on earth.

It is reported that every nation in Europe has collective bargaining agreements guaranteeing minimum paid vacations ranging from four to five and one-half weeks. In most cases, mandated vacation periods range up to six weeks. In Sweden, it goes as high as eight weeks. In the United States, vacation time for most workers remains limited to two weeks. I once worked with a nurse who bragged on not having taken a vacation in fourteen years. Millions of workers are on part-time contracts in which case they get no paid vacation at all.

Most people from the United States can honestly say that they often feel rushed. This may be partly due to the fact that many Americans strive for the “American Dream,”- the epitome of success, luxury and happiness. The concept is often regarded as an illusion; yet pressuring its citizens to constantly do more, earn more, and consume more - in order to achieve more - the ideals of American society drive people to constantly be in a hurried state of mind. Time decides when Americans make their appointments, when they do their work, and even how they spend their leisure time. “For many Americans the ‘free moments’ that once glued a busy life together have almost disappeared”. In the United States, time is undoubtedly in control of the everyday lives of most people.

The Pirahã Tribe living in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest has an extremely limited language of humming and whistling. There are only three pronouns and it is the only language in existence that does not use subordinate clauses. It is an astoundingly spare language. Using no numbers, letters, or art; they have no concept of time. Specialists such as linguist Daniel Everett at Manchester University have traveled to isolated Pirahã villages to teach the tribe how to read, write, to count; such attempts have generally failed. To even consider introducing the concept of time to this tribe would be foolish, as their concept of numbers is non existent. Extensive attempts to teach them to count to ten failed, not a single person was able to do so after eight months of intensive coaching. They have no specific religious beliefs—no reference to ancestors or heroes of the past. There is no past tense because everything exists for them in the present. When it can no longer be perceived, it ceases, to all intents, to exist. The linguistic limitations of this "carpe diem" culture explain why the Pirahã have no desire to remember where they come from and why they tell no stories. This tribe has presented an ultimate challenge to linguists.

Eventually Everett came up with a surprising explanation for the peculiarities of the Pirahã idiom. "The language is created by the culture," says the linguist. He explains the core of Pirahã culture with a simple formula: "Live here and now." The only thing of importance that is worth communicating to others is what is being experienced at that very moment. "All experience is anchored in the present," says Everett, who believes this carpe-diem culture doesn't allow for abstract thought or complicated connections to the past -- limiting the language accordingly.

For those of us living fast complex lives in Western Europe, North America, or Japan, it is inconceivable that anyone could live this way, outside the tyranny of time. Our entire way of thought and life is not even conceptualized by the Pirahã. Even though it may be difficult for people in time-dependent cultures to understand Pirahã ways, there is an important lesson in their relaxed lifestyle -encouraging people to live every moment for what it’s worth.

Let the batteries die in your clocks; you might just be in time for life.