The relativity of time
and living together
Everything is relative: Albert Einstein certainly wouldn't disagree. The father of the theory of special and general relativity, the man who - almost single-handedly - initiated a radical shift in our view of the world, must be turning in his grave.
The modern world seems to have forgotten once again the importance of the subliminal philosophical message carried by this physicist's work: accepting to have different points of view on community life, discussing them politely and striving to find compromises that allow us all to live together.
This great thinker died on april 18, 1955. Missing him by two years, I could almost have crossed paths with him! Granted, my informal babbling at the time probably wouldn't have captivated him much; but the very idea of imagining for a moment this improbable encounter highlights a phenomenon to which we pay little attention.
Without knowing it, our lives cross or brush against those of famous people, or people who will become famous. Sometimes infamously famous, as was the case with Hitler and Staline who, without realizing it, lived just a few hundred meters from each other for a few weeks in 1913 in Vienna.
This historical observation - notably recounted in a recent Austrian television series - illustrates the entanglement of spatio-temporal trajectories that are human destinies. It invites us to represent the passing of time with more appropriate images than straight lines running through history or superimposed family layers.
Indeed, to describe the course of our lives, it is not uncommon to imagine a straight line going from birth to death. Nobody imagines for a moment that this line isn't straight, except perhaps a mathematician named Gödel who, by tinkering with Albert Einstein's equations, managed to pull out some very strange solutions indicating that... yes, perhaps, in certain cases, we could return to where we started. But hey, so far this phenomenon has never been observed, and it remains the plot of a few science fiction movies. I think we can sleep in peace and no one will wake up tomorrow in the crib where they were born.
Furthermore, representing our families as layers probably originates from the fact that the notion of generations structures our societies. Before us were my parents, and before them their parents, and before my parents' parents... their parents and so on, heaven knows who and until when. Archaeological discoveries keep pushing back the marker for the birth of the first human-like apes.
And after us, there are our children (I sincerely wish you have some) and then our children's children. Sometimes, the length of our lives allows our eyes to watch our great-grandchildren grow up.
This is why the history of human families looks like a superposition of layers. Their thicknesses here are synonymous with durations. These latter depend heavily on families, the places where they live, and the economic and health difficulties they encounter.
Linear and layered visions are nonetheless reductive of reality. They are even misleading and dangerous for social cohesion. Because the various layers of a family coexist and, at any given moment, all ages of the pyramid are represented. All individuals of a generation live there, from the youngest to the oldest, not always in our midst or with us, but in this same present moment and, like us, they think, laugh and suffer, love and cry.
So let's not forget them. Let's help them keep living when they want to and not die when they don't want to.
So, is the relativity of time introduced and promoted by Albert Einstein:
"Really ancient history?"