Thinking Beyond Science

The truth is that we are all less able to think freely and clearly than we imagine. The human brain is highly biased and gullible, our memories malleable and unreliable. From the moment we are conceived to the day we die, our thoughts and actions are shaped by a noisy clamour of conflicting factors. From our genetic coding and the bacteria living inside of us, to the language we speak and the apps on our phone, a host of factors are pulling our strings, often without us even realising it.

Every thought, emotion and action is also shaped by the particular circumstances of your existence. Your age, your parents, friends and neighbours, your childhood experiences, the news you consume and the food you eat – all these play a part. You may want to do things your way, but how much control do you really have over your thinking.

On the face of it, this may sound familiar – we have all experienced time appearing to speed up or slow down in extreme situations. But what causes these radical fluctuations in time perception – and how can it affect the way we think more broadly? Time isn’t just one thing – we measure it and perceive it in two very different ways. The time we measure with a watch (let’s call it ‘clock time’) essentially marks Earth’s predictable passage around the sun. It takes a year for the Earth to orbit our star and a day for it to rotate on its axis.

Coming up with a universal theory of time that can be defined on a cosmic level is more complex. Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, for example, shows that all time is relative. But few of us are likely to travel close to light speed, orbit a black hole, or encounter the cosmic phenomena that, dramatically, can warp measurable time, so let’s assume that the time on our watch is a constant – at least in our everyday lives.

The way we perceive time, however, is very different. In fact, we are all time travellers of sorts. Even as the hands of our watch sweep round the dial at a constant rate, we may feel that time is moving faster, or slower, depending on our mood, what we’re doing and how old we are. In a scary situation, such as a car accident, for example, time can seemingly grind to a near standstill, as if the event is being played in slow motion. Conversely, time often appears to speed up as we age – a phenomenon that dramatically affects how we think.* This sense that time is passing more quickly as we get older may make us anxious and regretful, trigger a mid-life crisis and result in impulsive behavior, from buying a sports car or quitting a job to having an affair.

The relationship between time perception and memory is important because it offers clues as to how we can feel more in control of our time and, crucially, how we can feel that we are living a fuller, more rewarding life. In our early years, we are bombarded with dazzlingly novel experiences. Think of all the ‘first’ experiences you had as a child – smelling, touching, seeing, hearing and learning the skills needed to make sense of those experiences. And all this new information requires memory. As we age, however, life becomes ever more familiar and we settle into predictable routines, placing fewer demands on our memory.’

The science suggests that time appears to slow down – at least retrospectively – when we are subject to more sensory inputs and make more memories, such as during childhood, a thrilling holiday, a first date or a car crash. But it speeds up as we get older, life becomes more mundane, we encounter fewer novel situations and the richness of new memories reduces. Indeed, MRI scans showed that the participants in Clot’s experiment experienced a shrinking of parts of the brain, such as the hippocampus, related to immediate memory. In the bland confines of the cave and cut off from all the information we must normally process in the outside world, the volunteers began to remember less. And with fewer memories to mark its passage, the time they spent in the cave felt like it had passed more quickly.

The disturbing sense that we’re running out of time can affect us all and lead to poorly thought-out decisions. That so many people often feel this way, despite being surrounded by more and more time-saving technologies, is one of the great modern paradoxes. But we can do something about it. One approach is to be more childlike – to resist needless routine and seek out unexpected and unusual experiences that will establish more numerous, high-definition memories. Thankfully, this needn’t mean adrenaline-rich experiences like freefalling (another proven way of slowing down time),” nor do we have to move countries or change careers and partners every few years. This can be as simple as making small tweaks, like avoiding the same old routines (which we cover in another chapter), such as taking the same route to work or eating the same lunch every day. That won’t work for every-one, of course, and routines have their own benefits. But it could have a positive impact on those who are troubled by a sense of life slipping through their fingers. For others, the need to just relax from a stressful life without having to read maps or learn new recipes may be more valuable than slowing down time.

We can also create adventure and novelty in life without travelling to exotic locations, paying anything or putting ourselves in peril. Creative projects – writing a book, taking up a new instrument or learning a new language – can be hugely rewarding and take us on great journeys in our minds, far away from routines and schedules. Research also shows that being more mindful can help, paying attention to the here and now rather than just getting through the day on autopilot.

You don’t need to start meditating to achieve this, even a (perfectly safe) walk in nature can slow down our perception of time. Overall, the more our minds need to process new information, the more time will appear to expand – the longer and richer our lives will seem in retrospect.

Source : Are You Thinking Clearly?: 29 reasons you aren’t, and what to do about it by Matt Warren, Miriam Frankel

Goodreads : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61464581-are-you-thinking-clearly

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