Is Time Fake?

By Jay

It seems that everything in this world is fake.  The American Heritage Dictionary defines “fake” as “having a false or misleading appearance; fraudulent…”  So what exactly in this world is fake? 

Well, I’d say just about everything…  But that doesn’t mean everything is bad.  It just means that nearly everything surrounding us is fake.  Let’s take a look at entertainment.  Hollywood spends billions of dollars every year producing movies so that people can vicariously experience something that they will never experience in real life.  Everything is fake about the movies – from the stories to the acting to the wardrobe to the set – everything.  Even movies that purport to be based on real stories are fake.  They are nothing more than actors playing parts on sets spouting words written for them by screenwriters.  Fake.  The entire Hollywood star system and world of celebrities is fake – from popular actors and singers to sports stars and other notables – these people are elevated in the eyes of the public to nearly godlike status with thousands of yellow journalists all over the world exaggerating and reporting details of their private lives.  Yet people love it!

Then there is religion.  From Christianity to Judaism to Mahometanism to Buddhism to Hinduism to all the other countless smaller religions out there – nothing is real.  They are all based on the words of gods or prophets or arcane priestly figures that all purport to know the way of achieving peace for the soul (something else that might be fake).  Christianity is the biggest.  People actually believe that a man who was crucified in circa. 29 A.D. rose from the dead telling a select few individuals in his rather vague way of speaking to spread the truth of his message, which is pleasant enough to read about but rather slight and embarrassingly platitudinous for an omniscient creator.   Yet where I live there is a church on just about every corner, which just goes to show how vital religion is in the lives of many people.  Though the foundations of religion are inherently fake, many of them have spawned some of the greatest literature in the world as well as that of art and architecture.  Christianity alone has produced such brilliant minds as St. Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas and many more.  And yet all is based on fictions created by certain canny individuals from the world’s past. 

As I sit here in my library writing these words, I look around and see all the fake things that surround me.  Fictional works by various authors such as Hugo, Irving, Hawthorne and others…  Historical volumes by Parkman, Prescott and a host of other early as well as modern historians – all reporting details from various sources which may or may not be true based on who is doing the telling…  Volumes of poetry – mere whimsical images set in a tight and constructive language – nothing more than translated thoughts or visions artistically rendered by the poet…  Christian philosophy and history of over two thousand years – all based on purported divinity…   

                                                        Dr. Frederick Cook's Fake Peak

The world has been full of imposters and frauds since time immemorial – from charlatans to politicians to scam artists – all engaging in fakery of some sort for either profit, publicity or power.  Of course, this doesn’t make us all imposters and frauds; however, I would almost wager to bet that if we really looked hard at the settings and situations in which we live, we would find that just about every facet of our lives has some aspect of unreality about it – from the image we have of ourselves that we try to project to others all the way down to our inmost thoughts and the burdensome doubts that plague our intentions and actions.  But can all of this be labelled under the heading fake?  I don’t know.  I really don’t know anything and am even more in the dark now than I was when I knew everything at age 18.  I should be getting wiser in my later years, yet all that seems to surround me are thoughts and beliefs that grow cloudier and murkier with the passage of time.  I suppose that before I leave this world – if I have the luxury to contemplate my imminent departure – all will appear nothing more to me than confounded nonsense cloaked in some garbled and indistinct mess.      

Yet I am satisfied with the fakeness that surrounds me.  I am perfectly complacent within my fakeness and revel in its overall meaninglessness.  I know that time itself is fake.  It appears to be nothing more than a construct of ours to fathom the past and the future that has not yet arrived; however, I so want it to exist simply for the fact that I wish to reflect upon the past – not only on the hazy details of my own meager existence but also on the events that preceded my inauspicious arrival.  So I believe that it is real, much like the myriad of fakeness that inspires the whole world to throb to the beat of nothing.