We measure time only as a comparative. We compare one interval of change to another. If a ball takes X amount of time to roll down an incline and another ball takes less time when the incline is elevated we make a comparison, a larger interval for the first ball to get from top to bottom and a smaller interval for the second ball. We observe the difference by using our own pace of awareness which introduces a third comparative that allows an estimated quantification. Ball two seems to arrive at the bottom of the ramp in about half the time required for ball number one, but to be more definitive we need another more reliable and regular motion produced interval to use as a standard. Our most basic standard interval is the rotating Earth and our latest, more accirate, interval standards are the vibration rates of the certain atoms.
The point is; the intervals we call time are only changes in position or condition. If nothing moves or changes its condition, including our synaptic awareness, there is no interval to measure and there is no time. Time requires motion and is meaningful only if compared to another interval of motion. Fortunately there is plenty of motion going on around us and comparative intervals are everywhere. The movements around us keep our awareness busy and delude us to into thinking we are passing through time when we are only observing, in synaptic intervals, motion and changes in condition. Time is a construct created by awareness. Without awareness, even at its simplest level, even the awarenss of a plant, time is only motion or a changing condition, nothing more.
Motion is displacement from one position to another but it, like time, needs another marked position as a comparative or it is meaningless. Motion without a reference point is the same as a static position. If you can’t measure a displacement nothing moved and no motion interval was created. From this viewpoint time and motion seem so interdependent that they become the same thing. Motion, time and their derivative, velocity, are all one in the same and have meaning only as comparatives to other motions, intervals and velocities. Stop all movement and time also stops.
The earth rotates at a pace we call a day, and makes one revolution around the sun in an interval of motion we call a year. To be able to measure the blur of motion around us we have sliced up these standards to create smaller standard increments. We have chopped the rotational period of our planet into twenty four pieces, and then to match other mathematical and geometrical constructs, further divided these increments by sixty and then again by sixty to arrive at an even smaller comparative increment of motion. We are now so used to using these increments of earthly rotation to coordinate our activities that we loose sight of the fact that they are not real bits of time. The minute is a comparative we use to gage and coordinate our activities, but it is not an increment of time. It is the motion taking place around us while the Earth turns 1/1,440th of a full rotation. The minute is a motion comparative, (what happens while the earth turns 1/1,440th of a full rotation).
We further delude ourselves by using our motion comparatives to specify activities taking place ‘Now’, in the ‘Past’, or in the ‘Future’, intimating that these terms are descriptions of an entity called time through which we drag our awareness. We specify segments of motion comparisons by assigning numbers and names to the earth’s rotational positions. For our 24 artificial rotational segments we use numbers from 1 to 12 with AM and PM or 1 to 24 and consider all activities occurring during the specified rotational segment as an hour of coincidental movements. We further specify coincidental movements or activity by segmenting our 15 degree, hour, rotational segments into sixty smaller rotational segments of 1/4th of a degree of rotation, (minutes), and sixty even smaller segments of 1/240th of a degree of rotation (seconds)
We confuse comparative and coincidental motions with a concept (time) because we have filled our vocabulary with words connected to the concept, and because the concept is useful. Phrases like “In the past”, “Two hours from now” and “Be there at four o’clock”, are a lot simpler and easier to deal with than, “Before we began this rotation around the sun”, or “When the earth has rotated 30 degrees”, or “Be there when the earth has rotated 60 degrees beyond the prime meridian”. Our awareness has also led us to believe we are on a continuous passage from one moment to the next when we are really just interacting with the mix of movements we cause and those we observe and remember. Time is a useful concept but October is only an arbitrary 30 degree orbital segment of the earth named after a roman emperor and a year is only one trip around the sun, and 4000 BC is a religious marker indicating an orbit 6,013 orbits before the current orbit. Time is motion observed and measured against other movements, nothing more. With time demoted to being a construct of our awareness it no longer has any real qualities. Time has become comparative motion instead of an invisible dimension through which things move.
Time as an original element in the universe does not exist. Only motion and energy fluctuations exist and this mix of motions and changes in conditions continues until observed as unmeasured and irrelevant leaving traces of previous movements, but never stopping or backing up.
Time, as a construct of living awareness, began when chance motions and conditions produced a self replicating, self energizing combination of molecules called life. With life added to the moving energy mix the universe began keeping track of conditions and movements. Using replicating molecular combinations as monitors, bacteria, began observing changes in the environment around them. Time is of significance only to a living awareness. Awareness is however of great significance and adds another dimension to reality. With the advent of life (awareness), creation continued in a new direction and at a new pace.