Does “time” actually exist?
By Shivute Kaapanda [Think Tank Africa]
The knowledge of time and its existence is tantamount to our existence as humans and probably to other living species.
Time is as old as the existence of humans but the existence of time has been a subject of political as well as religious interpretation up to today.
The following questions cultivate deep in our minds a hypothesis on why time is said to be political or a subject of religion.
Does time exist actually or does it only exist in our minds? Is time a reality or a perception? How do we as humans define time as a progress whole? Does the existence or non-existence of time mean anything to us? How does time help us to organize ourselves and our events?
Do other living species experience the existence of time the same way humans do? Why do we have different time zones in different geographical areas of the earth? What time is it now? Is it true that time is money? Does religion control and organize time?
Does politics have any influence on what time is it? Does the existence and non-existence of time rest on equal footing? If time is measured by 24 hours for everybody in every day, why is it that some people never seem to have enough time?
Is there such a concept as African time?
All these perplexing questions should sink deep into our minds in digesting and investigating the relationship of time in our everyday existence as humans.
Our relationship to the existence of time as a fictional phenomenon as religious and political animals is somehow a factor in finding out on the question how time in one way or another can actually be said not to have existed in an actual sense.
By actual it means by evidence and by evidence it would mean being able to be detected by our senses as humans.
Long in the past African people living in African villages created their own methods of indicating time to create the sense of meaning and perception in satisfying themselves as to what time was it in organizing themselves and to organize the uniformity of events as it related to the life they lived. These people used the shades of the trees, shades of the logs and poles, in fact they attributed the position of the Sun, the moon and the stars as their main indicators of time and used it to organize certain events in their lives such as the hunting seasons and conducting of cultural rites such as circumcisions, etc.
In fact the sun, moon and stars were not only the source of light but indicators of life and continuity of life which played a major role in the African spirituality.
Given these circumstances it would then be very problematic to say time does not exist because it has been proven historically and currently that human species has existed long enough with the existence of time and long enough to have proven the existence of time.
But the problem lies in the manner in which someone or some authority somewhere in a corner of the world assumed responsibility to set the time for the whole world or determine by what method or measure the concept of time must be indicated, calculated or understood.
Nowadays the existence of the indicators of time such as calendars and watches has taken us far back in the past to know that the human species in various locations of the world have created their own reality of time in accordance to their own perceptions which somehow has affected how time today is being perceived or socially constructed.
Let’s look at what we call the Common Calendar (Gregorian Calendar/Christian Calendar) for example that many countries in the world are currently using but which is also being used as a world standard calendar which was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 as a replacement of the Julian calendar by Julius Caesar which was a reformed version of the Roman calendar in the Roman empire with the assistance of the Greek mathematicians and astronomers such as Sosigenes and Alexandria.
This calendar existed for more than 1600 years until 1582. Looking at the current common calendar used in Africa and elsewhere one would notice that our social construction of time is a result of religious intervention more especially Christianity via the Roman Catholic Church.
Well this may be because in the past religion controlled all the spheres of human life. People have to be born in Europe for Africans to adapt to their ways of looking at time.
This is an answer to the presiding question on if religion controls or organizes time. Would it then be safe to say the modern perceptions and methods of time as a social construct was born in Europe?
Whether if there is any civilization in colonialism is a question all of us as Africans need to ask as we move to answer whether time actually exist or not and who really controls how time is socially perceived in the world of technology.
The question whether time exist or not has put many thinkers into discomfort but unless we tend to abuse the meaning of existence as a word in putting a proper context to the definition of time.
If time really exists only in our minds and not in actual reality then it does not exist actually. As humans we tend to have a polarized meaning in our thinking given our geographical locations in the universe for why we don’t have a complete uniformity of time, e.g. why do we have a 365 days year in Gregorian calendar but a different number of days and rites in an Ethiopian calendar which is far more different in the number of days and years?
Time does not actually only exist as a reality but rather as a social construct for if something really exist it does so actually, but not everything which exist does so actually and this therefore include the perception of existence of time as a fictional reality.
We need to investigate more about the concept of time at a philosophical level.
– Shivute Kaapanda is a Namibian writer from Eyanda village. This article forms part of the book he authored and published in 2020 titled “The Conscious Republic”. He can be reached at iskaapanda@gmail.com
