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The Four Forty Four Theory
By Miltos Manetas Sometimes you look at the time on your phone or on your computer and you have what we call a "FourFortyFour Moment".
0:00, 0:12, 01:01, 1:11, 1:23, 02:02, 2:22, 2:34, 03:03, 3:33, 3:45, 4:04,
4:44, 4:56, 05:05, 5:55, 06:06, 07:07, 08:08, 09:09, 10:10, 11:11, 12:12,
12:34, 13:11, 13:13, 14:22, 14:14, 15:15, 16:16, 17:17, 18:18, 19:19, 20:20,
21:21, 22:22, 23:23
These numbers - which look nice - are islands made by time. People accidentally get into them from different places all over the planet and just stay there for a minute. Whenever we have the same fourfortyfour moment we are together in a mental place. That place is so "mental" that it moves through time according to our location (i.e., when it's 4:44 AM in New York it's 1:44 AM in Los Angeles, while when it's 4:44 AM in Los Angeles, it is 7:44 AM in NY, etc.). The 4:44 Theory is a Neen Theory and therefore, explains absolutely nothing about those special moments but it pays attention to them (Neen is for paying attention and not explanation). The theory is also busy with some special existential situations, such as, "I just arrived in LA from NY and I haven't changed the time on my computer yet. So if I encounter a 4:44 moment on it, is that valid?" Such a question may seem silly, but it deals with the very contemporary problem of location. Where am I when "I am on my computer?" If we accept this 4:44 moment as a genuine one- and it is of course, because any 4:44 moment that we encounter is genuine by definition- then we should also start thinking in terms of Local Place (as in Local Time). When connected, we are somewhere that maybe different from our local place. |
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