The Hyperbolic Time Chamber (in reference to the popular anime Dragon Ball) is a realm that dilates time – one year spent inside of the Chamber corresponds with a single day outside of it. Many individuals in the anime exploit the Chamber’s dilutive properties to experience a year’s worth of improvement in just a single day. Those inside the Chamber thereby cultivate significantly more memories and additional skills relative to those on the outside, even though a singular Earth day has passed. Additionally, since those outside of the Chamber must instantaneously process a year’s worth of growth experienced by the individuals exiting it – as opposed to digesting these changes incrementally over the course of 365 days – the former are typically astonished by the differences witnessed in the latter.
Time can never be universally characterized. It ebbs, flows, expands, and contracts all while never surrendering any information about its next move. Many of us currently have an abundance of time, serving to devalue our perception of it (indeed, nothing is more effective at stifling appreciation than abundance). Some are turning to social media, streaming services, and video games to fill their newfound free time. Others are using this time for self-improvement, filling this vacuum with exercise, intellectual development, and deep conversation. This piece is not to assert how we should be spending our time. Rather, its goal is to illuminate the theft that is occurring before our very eyes and to discuss the disparities in growth that will exist when we are reintroduced into the world.
The theft occurring today regards our subjective perception of time. Given our current environment, it is particularly challenging to create meaningful progress at any level – individual, organizational, regional, and national. This lack of progression across all fronts restricts our movement and places society at a standstill. “We can only conceive time on the basis of movement. There must be change to make time possible,” as Carl Jung so eloquently states (and in direct contradiction to Zeno’s arrow paradox). This line of reasoning illuminates that our lack of mobility has adversely affected our contemporaneous perception of time. Yet, there are methods available to enhance our retrospective perception of time via the mechanism of memory creation.
“Memories accumulate in one temporal direction, and not in the other. This seems to explain the psychological arrow of time,” writes Jim Holt. Centrally, memories help us distinguish between different parts of our lives. Our memories encode continuous events into discrete objects, with each memory carrying the same weight – irrespective of how much time that memory encompasses! A memory that spans six months does not communicate that passage of time to our conscious mind when it is accessed retrospectively. Such a memory feels the same as one that spans a single month. The temporal component of our memories is retrieved via a mapping to some other part of our brain – it is not encoded in the memory itself!
Consequently, we have no mechanism for grasping the magnitude of changes in time through memories. If you want to create the illusion that an abundance of time has passed retrospectively, you must optimize for memory creation. A month packed with exposure to new stimuli will feel longer through the lens of memory retrieval than a year spent confined to a familiar place. Given the current state of the world, this period of time is likely to be devoid of stimulus (I know, this piece is packed with deep insights). One day simply rolls into the next, accumulating inconsequential moments and leaving us with no way to differentiate between the days. Our inability to demarcate the passage of time ensures this episode will retrospectively resemble one giant memory. This is the essence of forgotten time.
How are the concepts discussed above related? Consider that our contemporaneous perception of time has been adversely affected by the restriction in motion currently imposed by our environment. Since memories do not accurately encode the magnitude of changes in time when accessed, the best way to retrospectively enhance one’s perception of time is via an abundance of memory creation. This creation can be achieved via exposure to new stimuli, trauma, or new life developments. Logically, one should focus on creating memories through personal growth, as the first item in this list is difficult to obtain due to our restrictive environment, and the second is completely undesirable. Indeed, those who opt to pursue personal growth will find themselves transported to a realm where time is heavy – flowing with a weight many humans will never know. They will embark upon a journey into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber.
The Hyperbolic Time Chamber provides us with an elegant analogy for the situation we currently find ourselves in. Those who are investing their time in intellectual, physical, artistic, or spiritual improvements, will develop a more effective mechanism for demarcating the passage of time relative to those who simply consume content. Self-improvement leads to the feeling of time dilation through the lens of retrospective memory access. One can recall specific days highlighting the achievement of milestones, whereby each milestone is consequently accompanied by a memory – hence a boundary – for partitioning changes in time. Conversely, those who do not focus on personal growth enable the theft of their perception of time as they fail to create meaningful memories, leaving them with no mechanism to retrospectively differentiate between the days. One giant memory; forgotten time.
Additionally, when the doors to society reopen, disparities in growth between individuals will be extremely pronounced. Those who elected to spend their time improving – in essence, those that entered the Hyperbolic Time Chamber – will seem significantly more skilled versus their counterparts. Indeed, those who entered the Chamber will appear to have made astonishing progress – their peers forced to digest months of progress instantaneously – while those who abstained from entering appear all too familiar. This is the effect of witnessing the result of incremental improvement in discrete time, as opposed to continuous time. Closing the gap upon disparities in growth will be difficult as well; opportunities to enter the Hyperbolic Time Chamber are few and far between, and it is equally challenging to overcome the principles of compounding (as recently showcased in the public sphere).
Not everyone has the option to enter the Chamber, however. Those who lost jobs that were essential to meet their budget now find themselves without a means to pay for life’s necessities and have more immediate concerns than focusing on self-improvement. Consequently, the disparity between classes will be more pronounced when the doors to society reopen; the segmentation characterized as those who viewed quarantine as an opportunity for personal transformation or relaxation, and those who viewed quarantine as a catastrophe. Society must come to terms with this harsh reality – empathy must be exercised to understand that many people faced different realities from our own in order to ensure that the social damage caused by the coronavirus is mitigated. If this does not occur, the first-order effects of the coronavirus will be overwhelmed by the second-order effects of socioeconomic destabilization. In any event, the landscape of the world is certain to undergo a paradigm shift when life resumes.
If you have the option to enter the Chamber, spend some of your time thinking about how to make reintegration a positive societal development. Indeed, in order to learn the lessons of this saga, we must spend time actively thinking about the issues it has uncovered; doing so creates memories that will be available for retrospective access. We must do our best to ensure that this is not forgotten time.
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