Death as Sleep

If Death is given in terms of a deep slumber, as given in the phrase--RIP--the life would be no more that a persisting restlessness. That restlessness could be likened again to a guilt as given in sleepless nights of isolation. Life would be among the most guilty of sins; survival would be the first of evils.

"Sleep well," would be the greatest of benedictions. 

But life must needs be conisidered in terms other than that of a mere opposition derived from the serious, or grave, thought of death. Human flourishing is the goal here, not mere morbidity, a mere wish for sleep. 

Heaven is a beautiful thought: the idea of paradise. If death were sleep, heaven would be a beautiful dream, and hell would be a nightmare. In this way does an afterlife take on the appearance of rest. 

Doctor Whom: Part II

In our last episode, we considered a hypothetical genius, one who had managed to work out the complexities of time reversal, and had further managed to produce a technological device adequate to that same task. A technological marvel to all appearances, it features a transparent crystalline dome, so that the Doctor can witness the very turning of the tide of Time upon itself. The whole world stands outside the machine, he in its control deck. He inputs the necessary data, sets course for, say, the 12th century France, and executes the command sequence. The machine begins to whir and hum, and in front of his eyes, he sees the world appear as if

toooo

slooooowwww


dooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnnnn.


And just like that, Time's flow has been curbed. A moment later (Time still travels forward inside), events which had just transpired a moment before, begin to repeat themselves, only this time, in reverse. 

What does he witness then? He watches more than just a clock travelling in a wayward direction. He sees the very world outside set itself into reverse. A rubber ball falling and bouncing will seem to gain energy rather than lose it to thermodynamic entropy. With each bounce it will shoot higher and higher, until it reaches a plateau of gravitational potential energy.

Our Doctor has certainly already anticipated this turn of affairs, but nothing can substitute for the very act of witnessing it. And so, with eyes wide open, he realizes that he should have to now describe this strange gravitational behavior. And at this point, we have to recognize that we have already entered into a fictional realm, simply because it is not one with which we are at all familiar. We never see the world behaving as the Doctor sees it. His vision, therefore, has to be recognized as speculative. Here, we only mean to ask what sort of things it might be possible for him to see.

A) He sees the World torn apart, down to the last particle

In this first scenario, he simply witness the reversal of the forces of Gravity, Electromagnetism, the Weak and Strong Nuclear forces, and the rest. As a result, the entire universe appears to fall apart; Time and Space are themselves undone.

Speaking generously, it remains difficult to believe anything could survive this.

B) He sees Gravity exhibit properties which preserve the attraction of masses and do not lead to infinite repulsion

Somehow, this scenario is like that of the athlete above, which allows him to flip onto a roof simply by doing a few preparatory flips. And yet, this build up of force, whatever we may call it, does not build up in such a way as to hurl him from the face of the Earth and into deep space.

How would a scientist describe this "gravitational" behavior? Would it seriously be nothing more than changing an addition sign to a subtraction sign, a positive to a negative, or the like? Is Time something which behaves like a video, just pre-recorded contiguous information that can be explored in any direction? If so, then behaviors like Gravity are not in fact fundamental forces, because the world would be fundamentally Timeless, and a fundamentally Timeless world could have Gravity only as an illusory appearance.

C) The World Becomes Opaque

We ought to really consider this other option, since it might be that the only way of reversing Time is to stand "outside" of it, granting it actually makes sense to suppose Time having an inside and an outside. But how then are these properties of past, present, and future?

Perhaps it is enough to regard the inside as presence, while the outside would be more akin to "pre-creation" or "post-devastation", or, if a contrast must be made directly against presence, then as non-being. 

But doesn't this imply annihilation? If one must travel all the way to a "place" prior to Time—one which is, by the same measure, posterior to Time—it seems that one would fall entirely outside the possible conditions for existence (at least as far as we know it).


Implications

Without wanting to entirely shut the conversation down (this blog is more intended to start the conversation), what is really possible here? Have we missed something vital? Or is Time Reversal really just a "non-starter"?