Life without weekends

Imagine life without weekends. Not a life where one worked 7 days a week, but where there was no identifiable distinctions between what you did on weekends and what you did during the week.

As it is, our lives are framed into 7 day segments – specifically due to the business/work week. As a result, the “main” part of our weeks are the weekdays, with the minor portion of our weeks being the week-ends. Because we spend the main part of our weeks working, we usually spend the minor part of our weeks recuperating or doing small tasks that we had put off during the energy-exhausting weekdays. Actually, colloquially, the term ‘weekdays’ can be and typically is replaced by the word ‘week’. For instance, I can say “I go to school during the week” and no one (at least in America) will take me to mean that I attend school all 7 days of the week. We turned what was once a 7-day week – it technically is still 7 days in length - into a 5-day (business) week, which contrasts the week-end.

Thus we have a week and a week-end, with the technical meaning of ‘week’ coming to only be used in reference to larger categories of time such as months and years. We still say there are 4 weeks in a month and 52 weeks in a year, but we do not (in most cases) take ourselves to mean that there are only 20 business days in a month.

Obviously, business/job realities are not the only things structuring our frames of time. Church and sporting events have found themselves to become defining aspects of our weekends. Just imagine a Friday night without high school football or basketball, or a Sunday without the NFL, or a Sunday morning without droves of cars heading for their respective sanctuaries. Just as our jobs define our weeks, so too do our expectations of weekend activities. Of course, I would not be unwarranted in positing that most weekend activities have found the sacred week-end days they have due to the Monday through Friday business-week.

What can be problematic about such a framed understanding of one’s time on earth is the fact that it allows these partitions in time to be boundaries, things to be endured or overcome. How often have you heard someone (including yourself) desperately assert that “if I just get through this week, I’ll be in the clear”? What results though, is that many of our weeks become the object of such outlooks. In fact, for those who do not particularly enjoy their job or classes, almost every set of 5 week-days become this. And not only is the main part of the 7-day week something to be endured, but that also means that your weekend becomes two days to do nothing. If you spend 5 of 7 days “surviving”, you aren’t going to want to spend the other 2 days of your life doing a whole lot. Thus, the 2 days between your 5-day weeks become determined themselves, become a time to decompress, and to prepare for the upcoming week. Thus we find ourselves spending 5 days of our lives doing something we (often) would rather not be doing, and the 2 “free” days of our lives determined, or limited, by those 5 days. So after a year of "getting through" this week and "getting through" that week, you realize you have indeed "survived" those weeks, but at the same time, you also wonder what happened to your year.

So what would life look like without this 5-day/2-day structure? What would our experience of life be if we did not segment them into 7-day spans? Sure the sun and moon would still rise and fall on the horizons, but those sunrises wouldn’t have the significance, positive or negative, that they have for us now. Without weekends, the days can no longer be distinguished as either a week-day or a weekend-day. Everyday becomes the same day. It would be much more difficult to have this structured view of time where days or weeks become things-to-be-gotten-through. So while the days lose their distinction and significance, suddenly, our human activity takes on its own significance. It now becomes our choice as to what structures our life.

What’s more, if there is no weekend, then there are no 7-day weeks, and that means the calendar year now becomes a foreign organizational system to us too. Days are still days, defined by the rotation of the earth and years are still years defined by the orbiting around the sun, but the significance of how we spend those indistinguishable moments is up to us.

I’m not sure whether such a life is possible these days, and I’m not even sure whether such a way of living is any better than the one we currently have. But I wouldn’t mind trying it some time.

Some Thoughts of Time, Part II

This post has no real main point that I’m trying to argue but, similar to my last one, is a flow of ideas on time and identity.

In my previous post I said: “As a single event, I do not have existence; as an event, comprised of a past, I take up my identity (or even seen differently, I find myself). For there to be an “I” which looks back, there must first be that past which can be looked upon by the “I,” as the self in the present.”

The self is always present and only immediate. To be now it must have destroyed itself and yet still recognize itself as having been then, as some thing removed and distinct from what it is now. It is only through this recognition that time is possible, and it is only through time that identity is possible. Seemingly paradoxically, an “I” can only be present and yet is possible only through a succession of those presents, in other words, through time.

But isn’t this how we view time anyways, as a succession of present moments? The past is no special aspect of time, rather it is just the collection of experienced presents, which can be recollected in some fashion. Similarly, the future is just the totality of the unexperienced, and thus only perhaps possible, presents, which can be imagined in some fashion. The tenses of time are always in relation to the present.

The Relatedness of Time

In a blog post awhile back, I repeated a theory I had heard once:
“After one year of life, that past year was 1/1, or 100%, of your experience. After your twentieth year of life…, the previous year was 1/20th of your experience. So each year, since we are unable to expand our brains, causes the percentages of our brain to get reconfigured.” So the span of a day (which we calculate by the rotation of the earth), actually goes faster the older that we get, because it represents that much smaller of an experiencing than it once did. If time is only relative, then it is the case that as we get older, time gets shorter.

So I’m not only purposing the relative theory of time that says time only occurs with movement or in the relation of physical objects to one another, but also one that says that time is also related to itself; in fact, that is how it is possible. Because as mentioned two paragraphs back, the past and future are only modes of the present, modes of the “I” experiencing. And notice how I must use the in-process verb of “-ing” to express what an “I” does. When we say that “I worked yesterday”, we are saying that I was working at that given time and thus that I recall an experience of a present that is no longer be”ing” experienced.

So if time is related to itself, then every past event is defined as an experience”ing” which can now be objectified and thereby experienced anew (and yet in a new, removed way) by a new present “I”. Thus, memory is a collection of presents, which have become objects accessible to the now-present “I”.

What is odd is that an “-ing” implies a duration, a succession of experience. So as soon as we try to talk of an actual present (not just the present, as today or this year, but rather as the moment where experiencing occurs), we reduce it to such a slice of existence that it disappears altogether. So it seems that while having this notion of present is useful, when thought through, it is really an impossibility. And if I just spent this whole blog saying that all of time is in relation to our notions of the present, and the present doesn’t exist, then what is time?

Some Thoughts on Time

Time, by its very nature, takes all up within it; thus, there is no outside of time. For anything posited outside of time, so long as it is put in relation to time, will be captured by time. And so as soon as we say a thing is outside of time, it then is taken up by time.

Humanity, at once both crossing time and, as a result, yet nevertheless caught up by it, can only know things through it. For one can only cross in time, and never across or out of it. All things in relation to us, accessible to us, are then tethered by time and, as such, have only finite existence; in fact, they can only ‘be’ through such tethering. We cannot say there is a timeless idea such as Communism or Christianity; rather, in time, things which receive such a name share some commonalities, but each takes up its own identity, specific to that era, to that people. Reciprocally, time makes us and we make time.

As a single event, I do not have existence; as an event, comprised of a past, I take up my identity (or even seen differently, I find myself). For there to be an “I” which looks back, there must first be that past which can be looked upon by the “I,” as the self in the present. For example, when encountering a stranger, that is what they are. They have no history for us, and so we cannot call them anything but a stranger, endowed with superficial attributes that even then, require a history of their own. If we notice a big scar across the cheek, we imagine the sort of past that person would have had.

But at the same time, what is time without a recognition of itself? Can there be a succession of events without some event (some thing in time) first recognizing that succession, and thus those events. That we say there is a time before man is only the necessity of succession being thrown upon the preexistence which lays dormant for us, hiding in shadows. We only infer a before-humanity because, as mentioned before, we need a past to have a present. We cannot be without at least some thing once having been. But notice again, there can be no outside of time; even when some thing lies outside humanity’s jurisdiction (i.e. the time before we were), we still find a way to account for it (our current theory is evolution). Thus, we create our past, even when it is inaccessible to us, and never ours to begin with.

Why Time Flies

First off, I hate when people look back on a week and say, "Man that week flew by" or, "Ugh! This week will never end, it's going so slowly!" Unless the earth slowed down on its trek around the sun, the days and weeks still went by at the same rate. And yes I am somewhat aware of relativity, but as long as none of us were going light-speed, I believe we were all going about the same speed as we stayed attached to the earth. (That being said... I can't help but say it sometimes)

I'm going to present two ideas, none of which are mine, but that do seem to provide likely answers as to why we get these feelings of time 'flying' and why we always have to let everyone else know that it is for us.

1.

I read this one awhile ago, but I can't recall where I read it. Its simple, yet makes complete sense. After one year of life, that past year was 1/1, or 100%, of your experience. After your twentieth year of life (of which I am about 4 months from completing!!!), the previous year was 1/20th of your experience. So each year, since we are unable to expand our brains,  causes the percentages of our brain to get reconfigured. While this does seem too simple, and it probably is, it does make sense and is most likely correct to an extent.

2.

This one comes from Jeff Hawkins (creator of the PalmPilot) in his book, On Intelligence. One of the main subcategories to his overarching theory is that the brain's neocortex has a hierarchy of cells. Thus, there are lower levels and higher levels to it. The lower level take in basic sensory experience and then relays this up to the next level. At the next level, those cell's input is comprised of the various neuron firings from the lowest level. As this level recognizes patterns, it relays to a higher level where they see a pattern and begin to do different things with it. This a very poor reconstruction of his argument but I think it will do for this. 

Now when these patterns are something we've seen before, they follow a certain path and this pattern fits the previous path and so we recognize it (from memory). When it is new, it does not follow a common pattern. So while we see a person and we recognize (from memory) that it is a person on one of the mid-levels of the hierarchy (because all our low-level inputs show a pattern consistent with the inputs a person has normally given us), that is where it stops and we cannot associate a name with the person (which would be a higher-level task). So when a new series of inputs fits a pattern we've already seen, it is 'recognized'. If an experience is completely new, our neocortex takes notice of it and it goes all the way up the chain to the Hippocampus, where it is stored (in a sense).

Now how does this relate to why time flies???? Well Hawkins suggests that over time, and after more and more experience, we see less and less 'new' things. So while we may see 500 baseball games, they start to blend together because not a lot of 'new' experiences are occurring. We remember our 'first baseball game at Wrigely,' but we most likely won't remember the 73rd one, unless it happens to be the game the Cubs win the World Series (which would certainly be 'new' for us!!). In his diagram then, as a pattern is familiar, it will follow similar paths that we already have. If nothing new results, then it doesn't make it to the hippocampus. But if a guy spills his beer all over you in the 8th inning, that is most likely a new experience and it makes it all the way to the hippocampus to be stored. So while you may not be able to tell a friend how many strikeouts Zambrano had, you will certainly remember that spilled beer.

Again, I seem to avoid the question! But here is what it comes down to. As we experience more and more, less and less becomes 'new', because we have all this background that our brain is able to relate to the current situation. I think Hawkins uses the quote, "The more you experience, the less you remember." So in regards to the passing weeks of our life, as we experience less and less new information, it tends to not make it all the way to the hippocampus and as a result, we do not remember it. So weeks where we do 'the same old thing' are not the 'memorable' ones and our brain aptly 'discards' them.

another good example is people's names. Lets say you meet a new person and their name is generic, like Sarah. If you know 50 Sarah's that is most likely going to be tough to remember. But if her name turns out to be Jerra, it will most likely be foreign to you and you'll comment "Wow, that is a different name!" and you'll most likely remember that person and their name. While this is something we've all experienced, I'm still amazed at how Hawkin's theory is able to explain it scientifically and anatomically.

Side note: On Intelligence has become one of my top 2 or 3 books of all time. I've read it in two days and am disappointed it is over with. At the beginning of the book Hawkins says that when people read his book, they find themselves nodding in agreement with the things he says and how they can relate it to their lives. What is brilliant about his book is that it takes all these different aspects of our lives (on the scientific as well as social levels) and provides a theory of the brain that explains almost every part of them! While reading it, I did just what he said people usually do and thought back to all these instances that have occurred in my past that this theory explains. Now, after reading it through, I experience something and immediately think back to his book and how it perfectly explains what just happened (like with why people say "time flies"). 

I strongly encourage everyone to read this book! I know people always bombard you with these different books that they think is the greatest book ever, but seriously, this will change how you view your every-day life. I'm not saying you're going to quit your job and divorce your wife, but it will provide insight into why we do things we do and why we experience different things the way they do.