~ this post is a Part 2. There was also a Part 1 ~
So, a popular definition of time is: time is what keeps everything from happening all at once. If time does not exist, what keeps everything from happening all at once?
Well, everything is happening all at once. And not in any philosophical or freakadelic way! In just the plain way we see. Everything is happening continuously, in every direction, at all rates of speed. It's just that everything can't happen everywhere at once. When two things happen towards each other from opposite directions and collide, we say "an event!" When we fret over everything happening at once (and how to keep this from happening) we fret not over matter things, or energy things, but over relation things. We fret over events.
We really needn't fret over that! Yes, an event is - in terms of parts of speech, it's a noun. An event is a "thing," in that sense. But it is not a "thing" in the sense of such material or physical things as matter, energy. Events don't multiply what is. We trail no events behind us in our wake as we move! Events piling up in memory do not add to the accumulation of things-that-are. An event is just an underscore, an emphasis we place. A classification we bring to this or that kind of happening, or this or that specific happening. The event "exists" for exactly so long as the configuration is in place and then the event - is gone. As vanished as the configuration itself. The event is fleeting; it fleets away - it was only a relationship between things in the first place. It was an earthquake. It was a car accident. It was a gunshot to the head. It was a kiss.
Behind it is left: a changed state of things. Actual rubble, actual wreckage, an actual corpse. Love, actually - or at the very least saliva.
In all the things themselves, the energy-matter things - everything is happening all at once. It's not a logistics issue! Fret not. It doesn't take the calendar of days to stop three hundred sixty five suns from rising at once. All that's needed to "stop" that from happening is - the actual things of energy and matter that are happening. Because the earth's motion is regular, because there exists one earth, one sun, because of the actual things and their properties - location, velocity - the events will proceed in order. In sequence. The idea that anything more is needed to "stop" a bajillion suns and earths from suddenly configuring the fuck out of each other is amusingly ludicrous!
There's another popular definition of time that defines time as "that which clocks measure." To be a bit more strictly accurate, clocks are that which clocks measure. A clock measures only itself, not time. The tension and relation of the clock's inner workings is all that's needed, to keep every tick from happening "at once."
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