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Now!: Learning How to Live through Philosophy


Throughout our short lives on Earth we are often told (by unctuous types) to "seize the day" and "live in the moment", but to what extent is that possible? Let us reel in two early Greek philosophers, Heraclitus (535-475 BC) and Parmenides (540-? BC), and see how far these two gentlemen will get us.

Heraclitus is mainly known for stepping into a river and drawing a revelatory conclusion: One can never step into the same river twice. Apply that to our daily existence, and you will instantly see how true it is. To Heraclitus and his disciples, change (motion) is the only truth or constant in our reality. No material object can escape change. If it exists, it must undergo change, sooner or later. This, too, applies to human life. If someone told me to "live in the NOW", I would have trouble realising it. That is because what constitutes the present me is already on its way to becoming something else as we mull over this subject. What makes NOW ungraspable is that it does not exist: It is a product of what I WAS and what I AM ABOUT TO BECOME. The past and the future are two time zones we must not underestimate. The emotional baggage we have accumulated since childhood is not to be cast aside simply because newfangled psychology tells us we must live in the present. Your being a neurotic, fidgety, angst-driven perfectionist today has everything to do with the past; severing the past will not only blind you, it will also ensure a straight highway to a catastrophic future. What that means in quasi-philosophical terms, I think, is that your existence is a Heraclitean river. Whatever image you have of yourself at any given point in time is bound to alter and morph, for change is the only reality possible.

Parmenides made an equally interesting but completely contradictory hypothesis about change: he proposed that all is one, and change is thus impossible. Objects and matter are not really there in reality; they are merely illusions. In reality, there is only one truth: the indivisible universe. The changes we perceive in the material world are trickeries of the mind since motion is impossible in a universe where everything is ONE. To complicate matters, Heraclitus seemed to contradict himself by saying "It is wise to agree that all things are one," which makes it look like he and Parmenides agreed after all. Perhaps the truth is a little simpler. Perhaps what Heraclitus was suggesting is that the empirical world (the one your senses perceive) is a world of change, but the transcendental one is a different matter.

What has this got to do with "living in the now"?

What this means for a Heraclitean is that "living in the now" is a non sequitur, for there is not a NOW for him to live in. For a Parmenidean, it is somewhat more complicated. If he is dealing exclusively with eternal unchangeability, does this mean his whole existence is a NOW? There is also a school of thought, of which I am a believer, which combines the two hypotheses: that the Heraclitean world of change is in actuality an integral part of the Parmenidean universe of ONE. This means the changes one experiences are contained within the transcendental sphere of eternity. In other words, the changes we experience repeat themselves ad infinitum, which then means that there is in fact no change at all. Nietzsche called it "Eternal Recurrence." Hindus and Buddhists call it "the Wheel of Karma."

Change or no change, I intend to live my life to the fullest.

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