One of the conversations that Jesse and I end up having on a reasonably frequent basis is that of the philosophy of time travel, quantum physics and etc. I find myself pondering some of the basic everyday thinking of the topic first, and here are some of the common quotes one hears.

On Christian writer put it something like this “The present affects both the future and the past, the future in that what we do now affects what our future will consist of and the past because what we do now becomes the past and as such a part of our history.”

Many military writers (Sun Tzu included) would say things like “The soothsayer and the general are alike in that they both are trying to predict the future; only the general has a hand in trying to make it happen.”

My observation of many people’s actions, from the business man, to the sports coach to the guy in the bar hitting on the girls could be described as the best use of the knowledge of how to manage people’s will through a series of cause and effect (observed natural laws) to predetermined end.

I suspect this was what was trying to be depicted in Donnie Darko (Jesse’s fav movie, which I will let him comment on) when Donnie can see the “pathway” or “will” almost as an apparition coming from people’s chests.

I personally believe its why some people have dreams that seem to come true. Not because of some airy fairy reason but because I think we most definitely pick up on the will of people, we subconsciously pick up on there their cause and effect actions, reactions, personalities and sometimes I think we just process these while we are asleep and the resulting ideas end up in our dreams.

The other topic I think is interesting to cover is comparing “the moment” to the longer continuum of time are the changes in feelings over time. While I think we can have feelings about the future (generally hopes and fears) and feelings about the past (one of my friends says “all life is about the post rationalization of our past”) none of this compares as much to the level of feelings we tend to have in the present.

The big question I have is why these feelings in the present seem to almost cloud our opinion of time in general. I have often pondered -- is it these feelings that create and sustain life? are they life? Or are they the lie that can confuse life. I confess this piece of it came up for me because I wrote a post last night after meeting a somewhat interesting person, then I removed it this morning because I felt differently about it. My feelings and opinions changed with-in 6 hrs.

Is it purely the inputs to the brain on a certain topic are so strong at the time but then all the other data points come surging back at a later time canceling them out? Or is it the way we process information changes (i.e. when drinking) and when we are processing correctly (normally) our perspective changes?

I shall continue more tomorrow…

David Cook