Persistant Perceptions

      As you view and interpret the first word of this blog it slips into the past while you view and interpret the next word, and so on, until you get to a little dot that tells you to recall all the words in the sentence and form them into a connected whole of subjects predicates and conclusions. This synaptic exercise is then stored and compared to other stored synaptic groupings as a part of your expanding record of all your perceptions, everything you have ever experienced.
      We often confuse the duration of what we call the "present" with a collection of recently recorded perceptions, the time it has taken to read this far in this blog for example. The duration of the present is arbitrarily assigned by every living active awareness and to each new set of perceptions. In reality the present is much more fleeting. (see my blog, "Between the Past and the Future") What gives our thoughts continuity is the persistence of our perceptions as synaptic captures that gives them a temporary permanence that can be carried forward from one fleeting moment to the next.
     The material world around us, and of which our bodies, sensory organs and synaptic organs are made, also posses this ability to persist as the thin event horizon moves forward in tiny flickering jumps and gives us the illusion of permanence and of a wide present. In fact change occurs much more rapidly than our perception of permanence and although not obvious from our limited perspective alters everything around us at macro and micro scales at a dizzying pace.
     We have begun to recognize this gap between our perceptive limitations and the flickering reality between the past and the future as quantum effects and are struggling to reconcile the two by reconciling quantum mechanics and relativity.
      This effort to join the two most effective approaches to understanding the universe around us is beyond most of us conceptually but the concept that we live primarily in the immediate past and control the future only by fleeting synaptic choices and recorded perceptions is easier to comprehend. As you walk from one room to another you put one foot in front of the other with the direction of your travel dictated by a decision made in the recent past. As you transfer your weight from your left foot to your right as you walk your last step is now in the past and your next step in the future but we overcome the necessity of providing synaptic oversight and micro moments of perceptions to every step by creating the illusion of an extended present moment lasting from several steps at a time to the entire trip into the next room to the entire day, at our discretion.
      The practical world of our existence is created by our perceptions and their ability to transcend the transition of many flickering present moments. The past is gone forever as soon as the electrons in an atom change position or the Earth turns a fraction of an inch and the future state and position of all things would be predictable if the number of atoms, objects and interactive forces were not nearly infinite and if matter become animate had developed awareness and choice.
     We, and all living things, perceive permanence only because our perceptions, like this blog, are recorded and move into the next fleeting moment of reality, a thin slice between a past that is gone forever and a future that is yet to exist.

         See blog:  Between the Past and the Future