Levy's Writing

Time serves as one of the key structures of our society. Throughout each day we are constantly reminded of time: What time is it? What time did I start work? What time is the game? Remember that one time? Time flies when you are having fun! These expressions of time are categorized into two types of time: external time which labels our presence in reality and internal time which guides our actions, thoughts, and emotion. Naturally, we assume that these times are set in unison to each other, as time is always relative to an observer. But what happens when the times of the external and internal differ? In the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Woolf begins to explore this question through her unique writing style of free indirect discourse to travel forward and back in time, as Woolf narrates freely through the thoughts and memories of each character. With each half-hour and hourly strike of Big Ben in the heart of London, the clock serves as a tool to remind each character of the reality of life. The clock further provides physical structure and unity in a post-World War I society, connecting characters of the past at specific moments in time. Through the use of flashbacks we can parallel characters of the past into the present moment, which supports Woolf’s intricate understanding of time as circular not merely linear. Wolf further guides the reader to see how time can provoke daunting effects of fear and anxiety upon one’s life, which is displayed through

New ideas derived from self-reflection enable us to develop in ways that are spiritually linked to the future. The inexorable passage of adulthood is established by the motif of time, indicating that life is continuously moving forward. The personification of time “guiltless minute hand” suggest that time is not responsible for our future, but we are. Additionally, the dysphemistic personification of “time was killed” foreshadows the cessation of childhood. Eventually, the

Time, from one person’s experience to another, from day to day, from emotion to emotion, varies more than the individuals who experience it. Yet time still can be measured. People, almost from the earth’s inception, have had a desire to regulate time. This is still seen today, with all the watches, phone clocks, wall clocks, analog clocks, digital clocks, grandfather clocks, atomic clocks, timers, and stopwatches. Unfortunately, while it is possible to measure the actual emissions from an atom’s atomic transition, it is impossible to measure time perception in different circumstances. Both the poem “Time Is”, and the statue “Father Time”, portray the integral role of time in humanity.

Within the article, No time to think: Reflections on information technology and contemplative scholarship, David Levy discusses his perspective on the use of time and technology. He projects his ideas to his audience and basically says to take a chill pill with technology and life overall. Levy writes this article in a very consistent tone but does not fail to mention the ideas that he has and how society should go about them. While writing about his understanding of time, it is easy for his audience to relate his piece to Time Ain’t Money by Douglas Rushkoff in multiple forms. Although Levy and Rushkoff might have different viewpoints on the concept of time, they both go about getting their beliefs across in a familiar and direct way.

Rushkoff talks about how society is living in the now “presentism”. This is important to Rushkoff because he wants CEO’s of businesses to strive to catch up with society and stop running their businesses like it was the Industrial age. This analogy Rushkoff uses helps understand and further explain how presentism has become the social norm, while pushing out the past and future. Rushkoff states, “On the analog clock, each second is a portion of a minute, and each minute a portion of the day. Time is in motion. On the digital clock, time is static. A number. A now” (Rushkoff 114). Rushkoff uses two different types of clocks to represent how we have gone from having time in motion, moving forward to the new digital clocks, which does not show active motion all the time the only motion we see is when the numbers change over. This is an interesting analogy because it really gives us a plain and simple way to understand his key term presentism. The clocks also tie into culture as well. Our culture has changed from the industrial era where we were looking to the future, to the modern era where we are focused on what is happening right now, and not thinking of what is going to happen later or what has already happened. Since we now are only concerned with the present it has begun to shape the way we see history. “Consumers care less about the story….” (118). Rushkoff really brings us into society and how history has fallen to the

Michael Brown, in his novel “Finding the Field: an adventure of body, mind and spirit” claims (in his fourth universal truth) that now is the moment that matters that. He supports his claim by first arguing the counterclaim, he states that “most of us, most of the time, are not where our bodies are. Our minds are away in the future or the past.” and “The prospect of instant heaven produces a condition-red, ego security alert. Your ego will push every alarm button it can reach.” Brown then supports his claim by stating what it mean to live in the moment. Browns purpose is to explain what his audience has to do in order to live in the moment. He establishes an analytical tone for people that are living in the past.

* Denis Waitley once said that “Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.”

“But that perfect state had lacked one thing even for mechanical perfection – absolute permanency. Apparently as time went on, the feeding of the Under-world, however it was effected, had become disjointed”. (Wells,10.4) All human action is useless, nothing lasts forever. The whole society changes, not even the time machine stayed there in the

“A Farewell” by Amy Levy reflects the life of an outsider in the 19th century. The speaker portrays the internal battle that Levy faces in a racist and sexist society as being not only Jewish but a strong feminist and lesbian. By living through the speaker Levy is able to express her deepest thoughts and beliefs about contemporary society, and how it has come to affect her ultimately causing her to take her own life.

“Time demonstrates the metamorphosis, the non- originality of the entities, and forces us to ask whether it is possible to reach the image of an original world in the constant transformation of reality.”

In the past the news has done interviews with John Gray and his recent students. It has

“History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time.” Cicero presaged the study of historical memory and conceptions of time, which assumes that what and how we remember molds our past into something more than a chronological succession of events. Ever more appreciative of the subjectivity of recollection, we grasp that without memory, time passes away as little more than sterile chronology. In literary as well as literal history, time derives its meaning from Bergson’s “duration” – time as personal consciousness (322). In Faulkner’s fiction, duration is a centerpiece, even as chronology fails. Such is the case in The

Given the playing around with time in Time and the Conways, the words of Dunne profoundly influenced J.B. Priestley. Using this knowledge, Priestley wrote his own book on time, entitled Man and Time (1964). In this work, Priestley explained that each person has three “observers”: Observer One experiences time (and therefore, existence) as linear; Observer Two is able to catch glimpses of the past, present, and future especially through dreams while existing in a fourth dimensional time; Observer Three is aware of the other Observers and is ultimate (Foster, 4). Each succession of Observer is aware of its predecessor Observer so that the Third Observer is all-knowing and detached. What Priestley means to suggest is that on a general conscious level, we are aware of linear time. Only when we dream, are we able to let go of the limitations of perceiving time as linear; we are able to see time as happening all at once, being ‘the whole stretch of ourselves’ as Alan described. Time is not separate moments to be categorized as past, present, or future; rather, Observer Two breaks free from this categorization in order to perceive a ‘truer version of ourselves’. Then, Observer Three is even more omniscient than Observer two and seeks to be the most real version of ourselves; however, we do not have general access to request Observer three. These ideas of Priestley greatly influenced his work, especially Time and the Conways. Alan’s speech at the end of Act two to Kay is Priestley’s

In The Moving Spotlight… Cameron offers an advanced philosophical discussion of the ontology of time, and his contribution to contemporary debate on metaphysics of time (within analytic philosophy) has already received a vivid response from academics and stimulated further debate. In particular, Ingthorsson reflects on Cameron’s moving spotlight theory in his McTaggart's Paradox (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy), Routledge 2016, pp. 117-120. 1

With this being said, the author explans that changing one occurrence in history will not only change that specific segment of time on that persons timeline, but rather it will change all segments of time in every world. With all this in mind, Hanley concludes that, even though people’s properties are constantly changing in time, people are still able to persist as a larger whole. This essay would be useful in a research paper discussing time travel; however, it is merely opinion based and would not present a reliable argument to any