What if Time Flows in Reverse? Thoughts on the Nature of Time By Thomas McGrath June 18, 2018 Abstract Concepts of time as Astronomical Time, Cultural Time, and Absolute Time are defined, and an idea is developed that Absolute Time flows in reverse. Introduction Time is one of, if not the most important of mankind's early discoveries. But what is Time? Is it a dimension of how we document the world around us? How about a force that flows through everything similar to gravity? Could it be both? Assuming time is a force with a flow, how would you test the theory that the actual force of time flows not from past to future events as we know them and don't know them respectively, but from future to past? Perhaps we are just so used to unidirectional time and the distinct boundary between past and future that we have assumed time to be in forward progression and all this entails. Perhaps we are like salmon swimming against the current of time. Part 1. Astronomical Time and Cultural Time A distinction needs to be made between Astronomical Time and Cultural Time. In a paper titled "The Secret Science of Synchronicity Paper", I explain a little more of what is Astronomical vs Cultural Time, but the idea is pretty intuitive. The Astronomical clock certainly puts pressure on us by bounding our days and years. We have developed freedom from this through technology only to be bound by our own construct of time as history, cultural obligations, and works of art. "Time can be quantized both Astronomically and Culturally. Most of us naturally quantize time by day, week, month, and year. The day is simply when the sun comes up to when the sun goes down again. We go to sleep every night. It's hard to avoid noticing this. The week, for many, starts over after the events of the weekend mark a difference such that there is a cyclic effect. Months are noted every time we write down the date and have to change the number of the month. Bills are usually paid monthly. And years are celebrated with birthdays and holidays and by reference to the seasons. This Astronomical quantization of time is something we are so used to as it is both physically evident in daily lives as well as structurally and ceremonially ingrained as we become part of society. It is our sense of time that we live by. There are other ways to quantize time culturally. We can look at events such as storms, political terms of presidents or roman emperors, economic cycles of boom and bust, relationships, vacations, terms of service in the military, even reading a paper such as this from start to finish or watching a movie. Some of these are overtly used to quantize time in history books while some are intuitively used to quantize time in personal history. When we watch a movie we are seemingly transported to a different time as we lose track of Astronomical time." From The Secret Science of Synchronicity Paper by Thomas McGrath Part 2. Astronomical Time and Cultural Time vs Absolute Time We have created an idea of Astronomical Time and Cultural Time, but what about "Absolute Time" (the abstract idea of time beyond our basic concepts of time)? We may understand time as an experience, rather, as the experience of our lives. Past and future in relation to our present time. In this way we have developed a concept of time. Now let us take that concept and suggest that something like it exists beyond our direct experience and thought experiments. Perhaps this time is so similar to our concept of time that we wouldn't even think to look for it in the subtle nuances of our paradoxes. The second law of thermodynamics would seem to suggest that the universe as a whole is moving from a state of high energy density to a state of low energy density. Our experience on Earth, however, suggests that civilization is moving from low energy density to high energy density with inventions such as nuclear power and all that is involved in making a city function compared with cities of the past. This is a paradox. I would suggest that this could mean Absolute Time is flowing backwards from the big bang through today with Newton's second law as my primary justification. Because we experience the world in a process of becoming, it is easy to ascribe this to the nature of Absolute Time. Things are becoming more complex on our island in the stream, but what of the stream itself? It would seem that Astronomical Time is in essence cyclical, but that every cycle is different. Further, that the differences occur in an intuitively self-evident chronological order with past events determining the future. What if this is similar to salmon swimming upstream. They are going forward, everything around them is constantly changing from the beginning of their journey to the end, but they are going against the current. If they stopped midstream they would be swept back to where they started. If we all collectively stopped what we were doing to make civilization work, would we not end up further back from where we are now? Maybe this is because Absolute Time, as opposed to Relative Time, is a force that moves backwards, from high energy density to low energy density. Mastery of time could allow us to overcome current and future obstacles as civilization advances. In order for this to happen, it may be necessary to revisit our intuitive notion that time moves forward. Could a device be built now that future society could communicate with us on? How and where could we build such a device such that information transfer will be possible but have minimum impact? Maybe the reverse flow of time will allow us to be able to see into the future more clearly than we currently can.