Time

They say that time has meaning only to a particular observer and I tend to agree with that observation. In the sixties, I took a girl on a first date to the West End of London to see the stage musical ‘Desert Song’ (music by Romberg, lyrics by Hammerstein). In discussions after the musical, I was informed that it was the most boring, interminable, two hours of her life, whereas I was enthralled and thought it had flown by far too quickly.

Time and tide wait for no one as it grinds relentlessly on. We strive for independence at the age of three but have to bow to the constant aspirations of our parents and teachers as they try to mold us into beings of their own thought processes. We struggle with authority through our teenage years as we try to sort out some purpose for existence. We follow the biological urge to procreate, to marry and have children and then spend the next thirty years struggling for economic survival. Then it’s retirement and reverting back to our teenage years trying to find some purpose in life, and it all passes in the blink of an eye.

The earliest human life forms came into existence 300,000 years ago and the first human civilization was 6,000 years ago. This is against the backdrop of a universe that is 13.8 billion years old, the earth 4.5 billion years old, and microbes the earliest life form 3.7 billion years old. There have been at least three past cataclysmic episodes that have destroyed the majority of life on earth, but life has triumphed and gained momentum with each episode.

Humans have increased their average life span from 30 years to 80 years due to breakthroughs in science and technology. This is compared to 28 days for the life span of a house fly and 6 weeks for a worker bee. On the other end of the life spectrum, the Greenland Shark lives an average of 270 years, and a species of jellyfish is biologically immortal as the creature transitions backward from sexual maturity to sexual immaturity in a process called transdifferentiation where adult cells are converted to other types of tissue. Naturally, these creatures and this process is getting a lot of attention from scientists. Will the human life span increase to an average of 100 years by the end of this century? Are our genetics still evolving into something else? What effect will the passage of time have on the human species?

One of the flies in the ointment that the universe throws at us is the question of entropy, the amount of disorder and uncertainty within a system. Self-organizing systems engage in a continual dialogue with the environment and must adapt to changing circumstances, and the degree of disorder of an enclosed system always increases over time. This is true of the human body, the environment, and all organizational structures that humans create. We have transitioned from agriculture to the industrial revolution and currently to the technological revolution. We have evolved from different forms of governance, from kings and emperors to dictatorships and democracies. With all these structures there is a time when entropy sets in and new ways have to be discovered and this is where the human race is most resilient, adapting to change.

Now in my 75th year, all the foregoing points have shaped my thinking over time. It’s why I do not believe in man-made climate change, but understand that the universe is unfolding as it should to its own laws and rhythms and not man-made regulations. We should be aware that microbes have been around for 3.7 billion years and are part of all living creatures on this planet and we experiment with them at our own risk. They could just as well wipe the human species off the face of the planet and a new species will evolve more capable of survival.

I have faith in the human race to solve the entropy question by re-inventing new systems of survival. I believe that in a hundred years, the average age of human life will approach 100. To prolong the survival of the human race we should not denigrate freedom of speech but allow ample opportunity for all voices to be heard. I am one of 8 billion people on this planet, struggling to survive, and make sense of life. I do what I can for my family and community and hope to leave any place I touch a little better than before.