so umm here is chapter one. I am sorry I was really anxious to have people read it, so I only decided to proof read like the first 3 pages. I know Im a horrible slacker, but guess what! Chapter 2 is like about half way done, I think! Actually its pretty much done, so if you like it, I need you to do two things: 1). Comment(this you might want to do even if you do not like it :D) and 2). Wait for chapter 2 and comment then.
sorry, cant seem to acess the link, perhaps it is too long and got cut off.
Its trying to access the C drive, which is a local system. It wont open up unless the file is attached. Or if its uploaded onto the web, the link will work then.
Nimph, maybe you could copy/paste the text here? you had the location of your document on your computer as a 'link', doesn't work that way.
"Philosophical book: "Everything about Nothing""
Hmm. Sounds like every philosophic book I've ever read. :D
Sorry, people! I am trying to find a way to attach things and the FAQs aren't helping...much. So I will now make it submit it by pieces! ok?
Chapter 1...Piece 1
“Time, extraordinary and unexplainable. Simple, yet portrayed as complex beyond the thought of humans, or anyone else as a matter of fact. Many have tried but none have come close; that is, after a while they stopped calling them scientists. They became philosophers. I too am a great philosopher, but I also believe in science. Although the two were meant to be separate, they have been edging closer together ever since there became a distinction between philosophers and scientists.
“The ultimate question on every philosopher's mind of course is the question of time. No one has ever questioned its existence or its validity, but its identity has always been questioned. Some want to know what time is, others want to know if time can be changed, while others want to know if time can be used. Many have tried to come up with a view of time that would explain any one of these questions, but I want to present a universal theory, a theory that not only answers these questions but also numerous other ones. Is time truly unbreakable, unbendable, or untouchable? Does time flow like a river or does it stop and rest? Could time be portrayed in any way?
“My theory begins with a hotel, which has an infinite amount of rooms in it. All the rooms look the same: they have transparent walls, transparent ceilings, and transparent floors. Every other room in this hotel can be seen into from any other. None of the rooms is occupied with anything but people. There are no chairs, no sofas, no television sets, nothing. Just the people that are living in these rooms. Everyone chooses whichever room they are most comfortable in and they make this choice subconsciously. But how can these people choose the most comfortable room if all the rooms look the same? Well all the rooms may look the same, but they feel different. Every room is different inside because the time inside each room is different. Most humans choose the same room and they choose it because they feel the most contentment in a room which has 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day. In this room, each day is the same as the one before it and the one that will come after it. Every morning after waking up, time is moving at the same rate it was at moving in the evening before going to sleep.
“A more interesting part of the theory is about the time people are asleep. We loose track of time when we are asleep. A typical question after a good nap is, ‘How long was I asleep?’ This is a very interesting phenomenon because while we are sleeping our consciousness is slowly walking away from our 60-second room. Our consciousness is free to roam the hotel until it finds the most inviting room for the mind to rest in. Some people move to rooms where the time passes faster, that way they can stay in that room longer because our 60-second room is slower. They wake up later in the faster room and then when they move back to the slower room they wake up just in time to get to work, since a minute in the slower room can be an hour in the faster one. Others are very eager and want to begin their day early; they move to a slower room, so that their consciousness will sleep less. The most important thing to remember is that we go to sleep in the first place so that our bodies can rest. Because of this our consciousness moves to different rooms in the "time" hotel. If our bodies didn't need sleep, we would just stay in our 60-second room and continue living our happy lives without ever concerning ourselves with time. After all, time is an arbitrary idea.
“Who is it that invented the notion of time anyway? Who was it that made everyone think that time functions in seconds, which turn into minutes, which turn into hours, which turn into days, which turn into weeks, which turn into months, which finally turn into years? Why did people not question that categorization? Do we even need to categorize something that is as simple as time? Children are born with an understanding of time, just like they are born with an understanding of any other dimension. Time was conceived by observing the movements of heavenly bodies, such as the sun. It was observed that every day was 24 hours; a year, 365 days. What about those living on a distant planet. Their "days" are no longer days, their "year" no longer a year. In fact, quantifying our life on Earth is also wrong. It may be the twenty-first century in our room. There is a room in this "time" hotel where time passes faster than in our room; there it could be the thirty-first century. The idea of a quantity of time is as ridiculous as an idea from quantum mechanics, but we accept them both. For us time is not a question, nor an idea. For us time is a reality. But it is only a reality to us because we have never seen the other rooms.
“Imagine what it would be to live in another room of this grand hotel, where our boring, long day turns out to be only a second shorter.(I must stick with our incomprehensive quantification so that the concept will be easier to grasp.) Well, it isn't too difficult to picture. Just imagine waking up a second later than usual, everyday, and then doing the same amount of work that would have been done if that one second was not gone. If we always lived in that room then we would consider it normal, but when we move there from our 60-second room it feels different. Not much different because it is just one second. Everything would be happening faster than it did in our 60-second room because everything must happen there in 86,399 seconds instead of the 86,400 seconds in our usual day. But, here is a devastating fact. Our imagination is very limited and cannot realize many things. We can easily picture a room that is one second shorter, but what if every day was shorter by four hours; every hour shorter by ten minutes, every minute by 10 seconds? Even this picture can be imagine after we think about it for a long time. But, let us not stop there, let us reduce our imaginary day to only one second!
“Now that we have addressed the issue of what other rooms are like, I think that it is important to ponder how these rooms will work. We are comprised of a body and a consciousness, two opposite things. Our consciousness moves around in the hotel and our bodies move around the world. The mind leaves us, the body, in the room that is so familiar to us, but what do other rooms look like? How does the mind get there? Well the mind is like another body, except it lives in imagination. What we see as reality is only imagination for our mind. What we think is imagination, is the reality that the mind lives in. The reason why neither enters the realm of the other is because they cannot see each other. As we do not see the time around us, the consciousness does not see our reality. Also, since the body stay’s in a room that is our reality, the consciousness wants to leave that room. When the reality leaves, it is important to understand what our imagination, or its reality is like. The "time" hotel has rooms built so that each is seen from every other and so are the people living in these rooms. There is only one problem, our mind sees those people at relative speeds. Imagine a strip of invisible land, in a space, where nothing can be seen except a car. That car drives past you at 60 miles per hour, both you and the driver see each other. From your perspective the driver seems to be moving very fast while passing you. From the perspective of the driver, you are moving very quickly past him. If you start running after the driver at 60 miles per hour, then the driver isn't moving away from you, anymore. In those rooms it is just the same. The people that live in a room where there is only one second in a day, will not be able to see us because they move too swiftly past us, while we will not be able to see them because we are going so much slower. Interestingly enough, our body moves at the same speed that our mind moves at. If our mind goes to a room where the whole day is compressed into one second, then the body must start moving much faster.
“Only during the day can our bodies move around the world, while our consciousness only roams the "time" hotel during the night. But while our bodies are roaming around the world, our consciousness does not just sit all day in a room. For the day to pass, our consciousness must also do something. Our consciousness decides when our day will end and that is why sometimes we don't want to go to sleep, and at other times we can't keep our eyes open. Our consciousness must cross the room we are located in and exit it. That is why we go to sleep. When we sleep the consciousness roams the "time" hotel to find a more pleasant room, so when we are awake that consciousness is trying to escape the room that is does not find as welcoming. It is walking across our 60-second room while we are walking the Earth. It moves across our room until it finally escapes and we go to sleep. The only reason it comes back, is because the body has a certain amount of control over the mind. The body pulls the mind back from the endless rows of rooms in the hotel. When the body is no longer able to control the mind, the person sleeps forever and never again wakes up.
“It is now important to bring up the fact that we do not only travel to those rooms when we sleep. Our bodies are not mechanical and they do not run by a certain schedule. It is quite frequent that our mind is able to sneak out of our room and into another one, while we are still awake. We notice it too: every time that we are very excited and the time seems to move much more quickly than we are aware of. Every time that we think that hours pass within minutes, or minutes within hours, it is all the doing of our consciousness and our unawareness of its actions. We do not notice how it betrays the agreement that the body and the mind have; the agreement that states where the consciousness will stay and at what times: in the chosen room during day, in other rooms during the night. The body and the mind must function together to achieve what we all are attempting to achieve. When the body and the mind come together we refer to that as perfection. If there will be a person who will be able to ask his mind to go to a certain room, then imagine what he could do. There would be no barrier of speed for him. Patience will not be characteristic that the person will have to exhibit. Everything that is considered impossible will be only a laugh to such a man. Walking on air would only require that the mind to travel to room where time passes faster. That way, the body will be located in a slower room and will be able to keep up with the pace of molecules that are in the air. He will be able to jump off of them before they will bounce off because he will be faster than them. Why this man could even be God. He could create the Earth in six days, he could do it in a second if he pleases. Everyone will be under his control, everyone that does not believe. Everyone that does not believe in the reunion of mind and body.
“Now this may sound like a ridiculous thing to you, but I know how to travel from one room to the other. I have done it a multiple amount of times and each time I understood something new about time. In fact soon we might even be able to have everyone travel those rooms and then time will be.....”
Peter put down the book he was reading and rubbed his eyes and nose. This was not the first time that he stayed up until morning reading. For some reason he was attracted to reading all through the night, it became like a drug to him. Every night he resisted sleep and went on reading some book or documentaries. Sometimes he would read scientific journals and the newspaper for the past week. He didn't just read one newspaper either; he never trusted the data that the people posted so he confirmed it with at least three other sources before assuming it true. It was interesting to him to understand every single point and aspect of every bit of news. This was actually quite troublesome because all the books he read he didn't really believe unless they matched the data he learned before. Frankly the book he was reading now didn't not fall into that category. Somehow, that book seemed to be just right for Peter. He agreed with every single part of it so far, except he did not understand how the narrator learned to travel those rooms. Well that was the exact reason why he stopped reading that book. He wanted to give himself some time to ponder out the details of what the author was saying. Peter was very much used to thinking during his sleep and for some reason all his brilliant ideas came to him during the night. His last brilliant idea was on his usual subject of computer programming. He made another theory in programming. He never patented it or even formally presented it. He did not believe in ideas being paid for. Well after all what he was a genius. If he was paid for his ideas he would be a millionaire already.
Actually he was a millionaire since last year, after he paid the last of his required payments for his house. His house was quite luxurious, everything he ever wanted, but Peter was thinking of moving out. He was the only person occupying 3000 square feet of living space, and he rarely moved about his house. In fact, he had never even visited three of the seven rooms. Peter was not extremely successful about his personal life, in fact he was a little paranoid. He never trusted his friends because of his childhood.
Peter did not become a genius, he was born as one. Being a genius he never had a very hard time in class and when they introduced the program that was supposed to be challenging he excelled in it. Except that there was only one problem. He could never understand how to write. He could write any math equation out, prove it, and explain it to an idiot so that he would understand it too. He never had trouble explaining his thoughts in math or maybe a programming language, but when it got to English he was just barely better than an average student, which of course was unacceptable at the level that he was studying at. When he applied to college he was five years younger than all the other applicants and he chose the best college that didn't have anything to do with English. The technical college that he went to accepter him, paid for his education and his room. That college did everything that he wanted, except make him friends. He was never able to socialize with anyone, partially because he was considered to be a little kid. Also, he was considered an outcast because of his genius. Peter was very lonely in this college and all he ever did was study. After a certain time has passed, Peter was in his fourth year in college, he found a friend. Her name was Jessica. As the only person that he has ever talked to, she seemed to be perfect. Jessica herself was not that popular because she too was extremely smart, not a genius like Peter, but close enough. All they ever did was talk about academics. She was a smart person and could keep up with Peter. She was applying for the same major and taking all the same classes, so they always had something to talk about because the homework that the teachers assigned took up mostly the whole day and when it didn't, they always loved to discuss philosophy. Time, the universe, the world, and everyday lives. They discussed people and what those people were doing. Or they discussed what something truly is. Was anything truly alive? Did the animals think like humans? All in all they had a wonderful time together.
After only a semester in college with Jessica, Peter began to understand something that he has never experienced before and could only identify it as love. Well, what else could have happened, after all Jessica was the only girl and friend he ever had. He tried to see if Jessica had any of the same feelings towards him that he did towards her. He wasn't that extremely experienced in these matters so it always seemed to him that she loved him back, but at other times it was obvious that she didn't. This drove Peter mad until one day he finely puckered up the courage and asked Jessica out. Jessica who was as experienced in this as Peter was did not answer him right away. She told him that she doesn't like to make rash decisions and with that their day together was finished. In fact their whole week was finished. Peter never saw Jessica again in all that time, his heart broken. Jessica made up her mind after that week, came up to Peter and confirmed the day they will go and where they will meet. That day Peter was so excited that he could not sit in his chair and listen to the lectures. The day of his first date finally came and he was very much excited. He was so excited that he forgot his wallet and Jessica was required to pay for the movie that they went to see. Afterwards, Peter was extremely embarrassed because of that, but he was even more depressed than he was embarrassed because Jessica left him on their first date. It wasn't a date from Jessica's perspective, it was a chance to tell Peter that she did not like him.
After this, Peter never trusted any one. Not that there were many people that he could have trusted. After all he only had one or two friends in all of his life. Peter changed drastically after that date too. He completely destroyed his optimistic ideals and became a pessimist. He never looked forward to anything and seeing Peter happy was something that only a lucky few could have experienced. He grew up this way and didn't change much, other than that he became very unpredictable and changed his jobs every now and then. He never changed the type of the job, he always stuck with programming, but he always wanted a different boss. Everything just seemed too easy for him. Speaking of jobs, Peter was going to an interview for another one tomorrow. Well actually today since it was already morning and not night anymore.
A/N By the by...i am somewhat sorry, but this is a book and all philosophy needs to get chewed up because it requires understanding and connection with real world. So my book is not all philosophy, but a big part of it is.
Peter looked at his alarm clock and decided that he will go to sleep...soon. He looked at the back cover of this book where a summery of the book was written. The big bolded letters caught his eye so he read them.
"From the author that experienced it all, J.F. Hunnington!"
This made Peter chuckle and understand that this book, just like any other, was looking to be published and sold. Anything that made money these days was good enough, the quality did not matter. Peter made an analogy in his head about the market and then thought that they will be taking the analog watch off the market soon too because the time was hard to read on them. With that thought Peter let out another chuckle and decided that this was the perfect time for him to go to sleep. Besides, Peter thought, I have an important day tomorrow, I should definitely get some sleep.
Just like every night, this night Peter was not able to get a good night's sleep. He tried and tried but couldn't. In fact he wasn't even conscious of the fact that he was thinking more than he ever did when he was awake. First he started thinking about the book he just read. The wonderful book, "Escaping Time". That book was meant for thinking and nothing else. It was a philosophical novel where everything revolved around the philosophy presented in that book. Then he started working, programming, his favorite exercise. For the past seventy days Peter has been trying to make a life-like model of the solar system and every other star and planet that has been discovered to date, this was not a very easy assignment. These were the factors that were not letting him sleep through the night.
When Peter woke up, he had a terrible headache, but he was used to it. He had a headache every time he woke up. His head never stopped working. That is why it took Peter almost ten minutes to realize his surroundings and start to function normally again. His dizziness faded away as he looked down at the floor. He stood up and went towards his dresser, he needed good clothes for his interview today. He picked out his favorite, black tie and his grey-colored suit. He also put on his favorite teal shirt. Peter never cared much for what he wore as long as the clothes were good. He never cared about which colors go well together and which do not. There never were strict codes of what color an employee’s shirt should be. Peter figured out that if he spent time picking out his clothes that he would be just wasting time, since it wasn’t required for him to do.
Peter then slowly made his way down the spiral stairs to get himself some breakfast and be off to the interview. He came to his refrigerator and opened it up. There was not much to choose from, so he took the only thing that was available to eat that would constitute itself for breakfast. Peter took out the left over pieces of chicken and put them on a plate. Then he took the plate and put it into the microwave. Peter thought that one and a half minutes would be just fine for a piece of chicken to get heated up, so he brought his fingers up to the microwave dials. He couldn’t help but notice the time that was printed on that microwave. 9:53. The numbers didn’t strike much importance to Peter, so he just pressed the three numbers on the dial and his food started heating. It was only after the food was done cooking that he realized that he was supposed to be at the interview at 10 o’clock sharp.
Without thinking for a second about his heated breakfast, Peter sprang to get the keys to his silvery Lexus. He now regretted his choice of reading instead of sleeping or setting his alarm for the right time. Peter opened the door to the garage, slipped into the car, drove out of the house all under a minute. He did not stop to think for a single second how his about anything, he needed to be at that interview on time. With this, Peter embarked to finish the 30 minute drive within seven. Although Peter didn’t calculate this, but he would have to go at least 90 miles per hour to get to the interview on time.
Late! I’m late! How can I be late to a job interview? Why me? Why today? I’m never reading after 10 ever again. Why is this car going so slow? Why is it stopping? I’M LATE!!!
These were Peter’s only thoughts as he was driving over 60 miles per hour on a residential street, but even this was not fast enough to get him to work on time. It never caught his eye how the light kept changing from yellow to red ahead of him. In fact he could have been ticketed for at least a thousand dollars, but he was late. Peter passed a policeman in his police car, the policeman didn’t even start after him. Peter didn’t even care about the fact that he was speeding, he couldn’t be late for his appointed job. Even though Peter was paying attention to the road that was flashing in front of him because of his speed, it did not stop Peter from thinking about the things happening around him. Maybe today was the day where everyone was very lazy. The policeman did not go after him, the cars in front of him were moving at best five miles per hour. Was he the only one in a hurry?
Peter got there, in what seemed to him to be an hour at least, and stumbled into the building, forgetting to lock his car. Then came the agonizing wait for the elevator, but after only seconds of waiting Peter flew up a flight of stairs and began his assent in such a rapid pace that he could barely place his feet on the stairs. Waiting for the elevator to come took too long in his opinion. He slammed into the door and opened it, almost hitting the person on the other side. He turned left, opened the door to the conference room where he was supposed to have his interview. There sat his “soon-to-be” boss, looking at him. As he was about to start speaking he remembered that he ran to the tenth floor, so he took a moment to catch his breath.
After catching his breath, he was about to apologize to the man sitting in front of him, the man chuckled and said, “Barely made it. You are the first person I have seen that ran in here willingly,” another chuckle. “At least you are on time, right? Let’s start this thing.”