Perspectives!

One thing that I figured out in 3rd grade was that the nature of time is the lack of repetition.  Consider:  Today is May 2nd, 2009, and we are never going to get that back again.  Now, when I was in third grade, this seemed like a big deal.  Question: why did it seem like a big deal and it does not seem like a big deal now?  Back then, I lamented the fact that this moment will never return again.  The whole point of our system of time is uniqueness, as a means to denote it.  Heady philosophy for a 3rd grader!

Consider: the reason that we do not think 0f the "miracle of birth" as a miracle is because it has happened over 6 billion times (As of the present day-amount of people:  think of the ages and ages of births and animals and plants that have had sex and birthed).  We only think of the miracle of birth or the miracle of the moment when we think of its uniqueness compared to all others.  

The reason that we do not care for this moment is because we think we will get it back again.  We think we are going to hit this moment again and again and again.

With his philosophy of contingency, Leibniz has a theory that we are in the middle of a bunch of possible realities.  So when you go for the strawberry ice cream instead of the vanilla, there is another planet out there with you going for the vanilla, instead of the strawberry.  With the recent theories of physics, it seems as though with the multiuniverses and multiple dimensions, Leibniz could seriously be right.  

Spinoza, as I learned in Jarrett's Guide for the Perplexed: Spinoza, thought that the only reason we believe in contingent truths is because we really do not take into account uniqueness.  For example, when you go to chop a tree down, it seems as though, standing in front of the forest full of trees, that you could cut down any of them without any ramifications or determined-ness.   The reason for this is because you do not see the fact that the tree you chopped down was that particular tree with those particular circumstances.  That tree was really selected because it was the closest to the house, because it was just the right size, or because you had the specific emotions at that time to cut it down.  

So you're never going to get this day back again.  The reason that you do not really care about this substituted denotation of the moment (this moment = this time, right here, right now), is because it looks like all other moments.  It looks the same as the next moment and in this way, you are not going to realize how special this is until 15 years later.