The Order of Time

by Carlo Rovelli

Our interaction with the world is partial, which is why we see it in a blurred way. To this blurring is added quantum indeterminacy. The ignorance that follows from this determines the existence of a particular variable—thermal time (chapter 9)—and of an entropy that quantifies our uncertainty.

“Every day countless people die, and yet those who remain live as if they were immortals.”

Mahābhārata III.297. a powerful spirit named Yaksa asks the oldest and wisest of the Pandava, Yudhistira, what is the greatest of all mysteries.

I do not fear death. I fear suffering. And I fear old age, though less so now that I am witnessing the tranquil and pleasant old age of my father. I am afraid of frailty, and of the absence of love.

A kindly sister, who will come quickly to close my eyes and caress my head.

Death - The Sister of Sleep

have already drunk deep of the bittersweet contents of this chalice, and if an angel were to come for me right now, saying, “Carlo, it’s time,” I would not ask to be left even long enough to finish this sentence. I would just smile up at him and follow.

Fearing the transition, being afraid of death, is like being afraid of reality itself; like being afraid of the sun.

It allows us to recognize the innumerable inefficient strategies, mistaken beliefs, and prejudices that we have.

In the first instance, we are driven by a thirst for life, by hunger, by the need to love, by the instinct to find our place in human society. In the second instance is Reason…

It only takes the experience of spending time with a friend who has suffered a serious schizophrenic episode, a few weeks with her struggling to communicate, to realize that delirium is a vast theatrical equipment with the capacity to stage the world, and that it is difficult to find arguments to distinguish it from those great collective deliriums of ours that are the foundations of our social and spiritual life, and of our understanding of the world.