The Never Ending Pool

So here it is, kiddos, the all-out-in place to be here at the NEP for thinking and therefore being (if you believe in that sort of thing). A place to grapple with the "meaning of it all"... just like the big boys- except nowhere near as well, of course.

I'll start the ball rolling with some questions and/or comments about our old friend/enemy TIME....--->>>

So let me get this straight... We exist "within" a "dimension" called "Time", right? (Also, "Space" haha but one mystery at a Time). Okay, so this "Time" really only exists for the multimillisecond called the "Present", right? As for the "Past"--- it's gone forever, Dude!!! Except in the form of "Memories", of course, which through the process of "Thought" can "Seem" "Real", but are they "Really"?

[It seems to me that if a memory can make you cry...that's pretty damn real, but is it, really real?]

Of course the third part of "Time" is good/bad old "The Future", looked forward to and/or feared by all!!! Now this is the part of the "Dimension" that exists but not yet, right? ["Oi, oi, my acheing head!!!]

We can also supposedly "Control" the future, right? As in, we can walk to our lovers house and kiss her--- IF we call ahead to ensure she is there and IF she allows us to kiss her and IF a safe doesn't fall on our head on the way over there and IF she doesn't die of a heart-attack before I get there (although I could still kiss her goodbye if I had the heart)..

And they call THAT "controlling the future"??? Ai-Yi-Yi!!!

Well, that's all I can deal with for now... Chime in with comments/thoughts of your own if you choose to..This subject or any other related topic... "Infinity" and "Existentialism", for example, are still up for grabs!!!

“Woman needs man and man must have his mate”
-Herman Hupfeld, As Time Goes By



“Woman always stands just where the man's shadow falls, so that he is only too liable to confuse the two.”

-Carl Jung, Women in Europe



The nature of relationships between men and women has fascinated psychologists and songwriters for decades. The idea of woman as animus originated with Carl Jung, who believed that the remote unreality of the mother was a model for the child’s subsequent idealization of women.

Why do some men seem always to choose the same type of woman, regardless of the woman’s suitability for him? Jung, believing that the love we receive as infants from our mother is the root of all the growth and change we experience through the course of our life, deduced that the mother represents the totality of life, in which we are but a small part. Only by regaining the mother can we return to the great silent from which everything originates and everything ends.

Is romantic love, then, as simple as falling in love with the first mother image we encounter, and repeating this encounter throughout the whole of our sexual life? It is not that simple. Our experience of a mother’s love is too profound for an erotic substitute to be satisfactory. Therefore, goddesses are created, which both eternalizes and humanizes the idealized mother figure.
Since the middle Ages, man’s psychological relationship to women has been expressed in the collective worship of the Virgin Mary. This impact of idealizing a shared image resulted in the devaluation of flesh and blood women. This Goddess figure, born in the collective unconscious, activated the collective libido of Western man, transforming the humble mother into a terrible witch who held the fates of men in her malevolently mutable heart.

Thus, the loving mother, symbolized in the pure and stainless eternality of the Mother of Christ, became the siren, the femme fatale, the symbol of death-in-life and life-in-death. And every man was destined to meet, confront, and resolve his relationship with his mother through the awakening of a primordial and eternal image of the mother for whose sake everything that embraces, protects, nourishes, and helps assumes maternal form, from the Alma Mater of the university to the personification of cities, countries, sciences and ideals.

The more remote and distant the mother was, the stronger will be the yearning of the son to reconnect with her on these volatile platforms. Chances are, he will have no idea this is what he is doing during the stages of his serial polygamies with the women who share the characteristics that unconsciously bind him to a maternal memory. These relationships will likely begin in a romanticized love that issues at first sight, then degenerates into domestic squabbles that are likely to be replays of the unforgotten conflicts between his mother and father during his childhood. If he realizes he is taking on the characteristics of his father, self-hatred is likely to result, ending in sexual dysfunction that may be alleviated through sado-masochistic role-playing.

The concept of negative destiny arises from the impossibility of these conscious relationships to coalesce with the unconscious stimulus of the mother love that has given them inception. Infantile man is bound to his cruel anima by a dissociated libido projected upon and external object. One might as well attempt to write a happy ending to Hamlet as to imagine a way out of this erotic conundrum. Jung writes that “the whole nature of man presupposes woman, both physically and spiritually. His system is tuned into woman from the start just as it is prepared for a quite definite world where there is water, light, air, salt, and carbohydrates.”

So it seems that man is destined for a series of entanglements with an idealized and temporal love object that he attempts to force into the lost memory of a primordial and eternal mother image. Were it not so, we would not have Rick obsessing over Ilsa in “Casablanca.” Ilsa would not be encouraging Sam to play “As time Goes By” at the piano, and Rick would not be saying, after gritting his teeth and accepting the inevitable, “If she can take it, so can I.” We wouldn’t even have the song, or the hundreds of thousands of songs that keep re-iterating the same theme of man’s need for woman and the desolation that is so often the result of that need.

The worst case of this entanglement results in what Jung termed ‘anima possession,” a state that he believed should be prevented at any cost. He defined anima possession as a state wherein the anima is forced into the inner world, where she functions as the medium between the ego and the unconscious, as does the persona between the ego and the environment.” It is the presence of such a medium that leads to personality breaks, and all hell is unleashed.

up to you wrote:

QUOTE:
I'll start the ball rolling with some questions and/or comments about our old friend/enemy TIME....--->>>

So let me get this straight... We exist "within" a "dimension" called "Time", right? (Also, "Space" haha but one mystery at a Time).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime

QUOTE:
Okay, so this "Time" really only exists for the multimillisecond called the "Present", right? As for the "Past"--- it's gone forever, Dude!!! Except in the form of "Memories", of course, which through the process of "Thought" can "Seem" "Real", but are they "Really"?

[It seems to me that if a memory can make you cry...that's pretty damn real, but is it, really real?]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_representation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism

QUOTE:
Of course the third part of "Time" is good/bad old "The Future", looked forward to and/or feared by all!!! Now this is the part of the "Dimension" that exists but not yet, right? ["Oi, oi, my acheing head!!!]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)

QUOTE:
We can also supposedly "Control" the future, right? As in, we can walk to our lovers house and kiss her--- IF we call ahead to ensure she is there and IF she allows us to kiss her and IF a safe doesn't fall on our head on the way over there and IF she doesn't die of a heart-attack before I get there (although I could still kiss her goodbye if I had the heart)..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality

QUOTE:
Well, that's all I can deal with for now... Chime in with comments/thoughts of your own if you choose to..This subject or any other related topic... "Infinity" and "Existentialism", for example, are still up for grabs!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

I am going to be busy with my reading assignment from above, so--- no, nevermind, I will not read them gentlesirs. Instead, I will say that Jung was onto something, like was Freud, yet when concepts such as this are suggested, I feel the need to limit their genius to being "onto something:"

These relationships will likely begin in a romanticized love that issues at first sight, then degenerates into domestic squabbles that are likely to be replays of the unforgotten conflicts between his mother and father during his childhood. If he realizes he is taking on the characteristics of his father, self-hatred is likely to result, ending in sexual dysfunction that may be alleviated through sado-masochistic role-playing.

In any event, who has not loved their mother, or the mother they wish she had been?

As for time, it is illusion. We posit time as a concept to account for memory and cognitive synthesis that relies on "histroical" (I know, circular definitions) data. The existence of memory creates the need to evolve a concept such as "time." Most brute mammals do not need the concept, nor do they rely upon it to act.

Well, hip-hip-hurrah, it's nice to see some responses already...

Zoinks, I appreciate the wikipedia references but I was hoping more for comments from individuals themselves (with maybe occasional nutshellian quotations here and there).

NotHenry, you mentioned the "Time is a Illusion" theory...which I'm not authorized to dispute . However, what about the thought that "the Future" occurs in not only Space but in Time? I'm just wondering...

Wurlitzer, your mother-love subject is one that I hope a lot of people will respond to, bringing their own 2 cents since most of them have mothers. I will say that I believe Freud and Jung might have had a field day with me, considering that I lived with my father and brother until he died (father) when I was 12, at which time I essentially "met" my mother and sister... Oi-Oi...AI-YIYI!!! I have no idea how the doctors would have considered the case, but I have occasionally used it all as an excuse for my alcoholism and having never married... Too much information? I hope not, since it was mere coincidence that "Mothers" sprang into the fray of this thread right off the bat!! Anyway, I'm guessing that the last paragraph of your post would explain Norman Bates in "Psycho" as well as many real-life psychos... Oh, also, beyond the psychological factors you mention in regard to men and their search for women, where does the old animal breeding/survival of the species influence rear it's raging head in the middle of all that psychological stuff?

Sexual selection and survival of the species is the domain of the female. Read Darwin for insight into how they make their selections. His book on sexual selection is a how-to-guide on how to score.

up to you wrote:

QUOTE:
Zoinks, I appreciate the wikipedia references but I was hoping more for comments from individuals themselves (with maybe occasional nutshellian quotations here and there).

Well, you're alluding to subjects on which there has already been an enormous amount of discussion and study. A vague and diffuse gesture towards these subjects on a forum like this is bound to elicit little more than laughable replies like:

As for time, it is illusion. We posit time as a concept to account for memory and cognitive synthesis that relies on "histroical" (I know, circular definitions) data. The existence of memory creates the need to evolve a concept such as "time."

Your time is better spent reading other stuff.

By the way, psychoanalysis is a joke.

Is calling my comments "laughable" an argument against them or do you just prefer I find out what wiki authors feel about it? I guess since you have found the irrefutable definition of time, then you may want to 'splain it to the rest of us idiots.

You acknowledged that your statement was meaningless, I'm merely agreeing with you.

Of course, your statement is problematic in other ways you didn't acknowledge, but that's beside the point.

Also, your statement being meaningless/problematic/laughable certainly doesn't depend on my finding "the irrefutable definition of time", not sure what your angle is there.

Finally, wikipedia is as good a place as any to begin casual reading on the topics in question.

I don't believe the OP wanted a wiki-education. He was looking for conversation, not a homework assignment. Still, nothing original in you, just comments about "problems" with what other people state and no analysis of your own? You go ahead and provide an adequate explanation of time, in your own words, and I promise to read it, up to about 1000 words, but no more.

I pretty much agree with all of that. Except that animals do have some kind of memory, or my mum's cat wouldn't remember when I visit every couple of months that I am the only one in the family that feeds him by hand (which he loves) and act accordingly. Obviously concepts like 'day' 'week' and divisions of time do not mean anything to them, but memory does not depend on those.

I don't regard psychology as a science but as a literary activity.

I definitely view our concept of time as a postulate to account for our "experience" (or perception) of memory and cognitive synthesis. Is "time" the chicken or egg? Philosophers have written 600 page books about it. If they came to a definitive conclusion, it escapes me. Likewise, if I could learn the internal consistency in their "system," I am also sure I will find a hidden assumption that shows the close linkage of a concept of time with the functionality of the "memory."

up to you wrote:

QUOTE:

NotHenry, you mentioned the "Time is a Illusion" theory...which I'm not authorized to dispute ;) . However, what about the thought that "the Future" occurs in not only Space but in Time? I'm just wondering...

I would probably also consider space an illusion. But space just "is." It is because we perceive it. I do not know why we perceive space, but we do, just like time. But once we try to talk about it, our tongues freeze or else become sharp and cutting.

i don't read posts from people who substitute links to wikipedia for original thought. if you want to reference something, link to the original material under discussion, not the unreliable wikipedia entry.

i have to disagree with not henry porter's linkage of time and memory. we do not have to travel through time to access our memories, which is why things from 30 years ago often seem as if they happened yesterday. it takes no more time to remember a memory from yesterday as it takes to remember one from 30 years ago.

time is essentially a way of measuring spacial relationships. The time measurements that are functional to our life on earth are based upon the time it takes the earth to orbit the sun, and the time it takes the moon to orbit the earth. Distance measurements in space are based upon the speed of light.

i have recently been thinking about how the expansion of the universe might affect the relativity of time perception. is there anyone here who knows if the length of our orbit around the sun would change if the universe was expanding in all directions? if so, our measurement of time based on orbits would be an illusion of perception. our measurement would remain the same but the properties of that which is measured would change. this might account for the common feeling that each successive year seems shorter.

even a faulty measurement of time suits the purpose of its measurement. without it, we would not be able to calculate such basic and essential things such as when to plant the seeds and when to prepare for the harvest. we would be unsure of how many daylight hours we had. if we got rid of time, it wouldnt be long before people again started noticing the phases of the moon and began mapping out charts that would soon become months and the concept of time would return.