What If Time Doesn't Exist? I guess that sounds like a stupid question. So let me qualify…

What if time, as Aristotle claimed, isn’t an independent entity but rather a measure of change—“the number of motion according to before and after”? And to be clear: this isn’t about chronological time (in case you’re looking at your watch), but about what Whitehead, Deleuze, and others would call “ontological” or “processual” time—time as the unfolding of becoming, not just a ticking clock.

Why does that matter? Let me try to frame it: if time is not something that exists apart from motion, but is instead bound up with the very process of change and becoming—then reality itself is not static “being” but a dynamic flow of “becoming,” in which time is the inner horizon of development and possibility.

This means we must question a model of movement that only sees change as the result of “efficient causes” in the modern sense—external forces, pushes and pulls, the mathematics of transfer. Aristotle’s account is richer: things do not merely move because they are pushed from without, but because they are drawn from within by their “telos,” their inherent aim or purpose. Ontological time, in this sense, is not a neutral backdrop, but a field of potentiality—of unfolding, individuation, even liturgical depth.

But with the rise of mathematical physics, from Galileo and Newton onward, this inner depth was flattened. Modern science, for all its power, measured only what could be modeled mathematically, observed externally, and tested experimentally. Final causation and inner development were replaced by quantifiable “units” of time, and time itself became a flat, linear metric—a universal yardstick, as dead and external as a ruler. What was once seen as the sacred rhythm of becoming—stages of growth, cycles of meaning, kairos and chronos—was reduced to a clock face, and finally, in the world of business, to a balance sheet.

This is not just a shift in language. It is a paradigm shift—a radical compression of our understanding of time and existence. Where once time was embedded in substance, development, and meaning, it is now merely a measure of external motion or, worse, a price tag for commodified life. The social sciences joined in, transmuting the yardstick from marginal utility (the measure of human change of nature) to money (the transactional benefit of instrumental change on markets). Stages of becoming became stages in accumulating wealth. In so doing, we commodified not just our labor, but life itself. “Time is money” is not just a slogan—it is a metaphysical regime, an ontological regime of control.

Yet there is something irreducible in the notion of “creating time” through becoming—where the very possibility of time and causality arises from the depth of substance, not from external measurement. Time, in its fullest sense, is not something to be managed, bought, or sold, but something to be inhabited, created, and redeemed—individually and relationally, in the fullness of our becoming.

The ethical leap here is not arbitrary: if we accept that time’s deepest reality is this unfolding of potentiality within and between us, then the meaning of human flourishing is bound up with our capacity to co-create, to give and receive, to participate in moments of depth and resonance. In this metaphysical perspective, time’s meaning and value are inseparable—true ‘time’ is always measured by its participation in the good, and the distinction between meaningful and wasted time is not a subjective preference but an ontological reality.

Who knows, maybe in the end, chronological time is one of those great historical deceivers that imprisons us, deflecting our imagination from the deepest things in life. Perhaps time has become a maladaptive defense against existential anxiety, and our professional time-management priests are nothing but disguised prophets of societal nihilism…

Adapting Virgil: Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus, dum celeri progressu horologii capior, optimizare singula, vitam proterendo.

Maybe, just maybe, we should dare to turn off time, and focus instead on our capacity to create timeless moments, in the here and now—as joyful expressions of our innermost humanity, beauty, goodness, and love…