How fast? This is not a physics question. Focus on people. How fast will you approach, encounter, and leave people today? You could time the process, but that would be rude behavior during an encounter. Let’s just estimate.
For a very short part of the day, you will be in close proximity to someone else. During that short time, you will make choices that can alter both your and another person’s day in some way.
If you watch a film, you see still pictures at 24 frames per second, enough to give you the sense of motion. Picture the next encounter as part of a film. How many frames will run during that encounter, that is, how many frozen moments will pass? Each, you realize, captures a relationship that plays out as the film runs. Your sense, of course, is that the encounter is smooth, so let’s not get into the old argument of Zeno and Parmenides. For you, the passage is smooth. But, assuming for a moment that you could break up your encounter into “frames,” what subtle differences would you detect from frame to frame?
That is, and this is the big “that is,” what change in either or both of you occurs because of the encounter? On a sequential examination of each frame, you might see no change. But isn’t it curious that during the only time this one encounter will occur in Earth’s history nothing much changed? You and the other person get a brief chance to alter each other in some manner in several frames of an encounter. You have control over half that encounter.
Stop the movie! Freeze frame! Pause! Surely, something is noticeable. You are the producer, editor, director, and co-star of the film. Will you get an award for any of those roles?
For a very short part of the day, you will be in close proximity to someone else. During that short time, you will make choices that can alter both your and another person’s day in some way.
If you watch a film, you see still pictures at 24 frames per second, enough to give you the sense of motion. Picture the next encounter as part of a film. How many frames will run during that encounter, that is, how many frozen moments will pass? Each, you realize, captures a relationship that plays out as the film runs. Your sense, of course, is that the encounter is smooth, so let’s not get into the old argument of Zeno and Parmenides. For you, the passage is smooth. But, assuming for a moment that you could break up your encounter into “frames,” what subtle differences would you detect from frame to frame?
That is, and this is the big “that is,” what change in either or both of you occurs because of the encounter? On a sequential examination of each frame, you might see no change. But isn’t it curious that during the only time this one encounter will occur in Earth’s history nothing much changed? You and the other person get a brief chance to alter each other in some manner in several frames of an encounter. You have control over half that encounter.
Stop the movie! Freeze frame! Pause! Surely, something is noticeable. You are the producer, editor, director, and co-star of the film. Will you get an award for any of those roles?
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