Whispering Time Duet: The Time of Society and the Time of Freedom (1890s) Bergson, "Time and Freedom"

Whispering Time Duet: The Time of Society and the Time of Freedom (1890s) Bergson, "Time and Freedom"
Bergson showed that our raw time has a two-layered structure. One is the external time shared for social life, the homogeneous and divisible time of the clock. This time is essential for schedules and collaboration, for supporting institutions and economies, but it is also an abstraction that cuts away the texture of consciousness. Order, such as timetables and schedules, is based on this external time. Bergson, on the other hand, emphasized the importance of internal time, or duration. Duration is the continuous flow of past experiences that permeate the present, overlapping memories and emotions. Here, action is not the result of a cause, but a creative event in which the entire consciousness crystallizes anew. Freedom is a qualitative leap that occurs in the depths of this continuity and cannot be explained by prediction or causation. Modern neuroscience shows that decision-making is a process of overlapping memory expectations and emotions, and psychology points out that
the discrepancy between social and internal time causes stress and discomfort. In addition, time perception research shows that emotional intensity and attention change the length of the subjective present, which is not consistent with external time. The external time is the time for society and the internal duration is our own time in which we are alive, and the meaning of freedom emerges in the misalignment of the two times.