Eisenhower Farewell Speech

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunities they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.

Three days from now, after a half century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen. Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation. My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years. In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation good, rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with Congress ends in a feeling -- on my part -- of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts, America is today the strongest, the most influential, and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily, the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration. The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of threat and stress.

But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of these, I mention two only.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual --is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years, I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

So, in this my last good night to you as your President, I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and in peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy. As for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I, my fellow citizens, need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations' great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration: We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings. Those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; and that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth; and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.

Thank you, and good night.

Humanism

By: Steven D. Schafersman

What is Humanism? For many reasons, this is not an easy question to answer, but I will attempt to answer it in a number of steps. The word "humanism" has a number of distinct meanings, all legitimate, so let's briefly discuss them all and narrow in on my type of humanism. First, humanism means the study of the humanities--literature, history, philosophy, and so forth. Professors and students of history, philosophy, and literature are humanists, and are perfectly legitimately so described.

A second definition of humanism is the European Renaissance revival of interest and critical inquiry in Western classical literature, which as you know, was pervasively secular and oriented to human, rather than theological, concerns, unlike that other great literary source of Western thought, the Bible. Individual scholars of such classical letters, such as Thomas More of England and Erasmus of Holland, were orthodox believers in an age of encompassing Christianity, but they are widely and correctly described as humanists, because they translated and commented upon the great literature of Aristotle, Plato, and other ancient classical, pagan writers.

A third definition of humanism is "humanitarianism." This is one of the trickiest and most confusing definitions, because while I would claim that my type of humanists are humanitarians, not all humanitarians are my type of humanist. In particular, some religious theists claim that they are humanists--for example, Christian humanists or Catholic humanists--because they claim that their religions are humanitarian, that they are therefore humanitarians and, thus, that they are therefore humanists. While I would argue about how humanitarian such religions really are, I must admit that if such individuals are truly humanitarian, they can refer to themselves as humanists under this definition.

But obviously academic humanism, Renaissance humanism, and Christian "humanitarian" humanism is not the type of humanism I wish to discuss this morning. My type of humanism is correctly known as "naturalistic humanism." Naturalistic humanism, or Humanism (with a capital H) as I will speak of it from now on, is the type of humanism in the news, the type of humanism opposed to supernaturalism and theistic religion, the type of humanism that claims that humans are as much responsible for formulating their values, morals, and ideals as for following them.

I will define Humanism, although I hesitate to do so, because--as I like to tell audiences--there are thousands of definitions of Humanism, one for every Humanist. Yes, Humanists are individualists; more so than even Unitarian Universalists, they reject dogma, creed, conformity, and authoritarianism. But obviously we have to have definitions. I have heard Humanism explicitly equated by naturalistic Humanists with humanitarianism, environmentalism, secularism, naturalism, and so forth. All good beliefs, of course, but not specifically Humanism. A good and widely acceptable definition of Humanism is this:

Humanism is the naturalistic philosophy or way of life centered on human concerns and values that asserts the dignity and worth of humans and their capacity for self-actualization through the use of reason and scientific inquiry.

[My preferred definition today is this: Humanism is a philosophy, world view, or life stance based on naturalism--the conviction that the universe or nature is all that exists or is real. Humanism serves, for many humanists, some of the psychological and social functions of a religion, but without belief in deities, transcendental entities, miracles, life after death, and the supernatural. Humanists seek to understand the universe by using science and its methods of critical inquiry--logical reasoning, empirical evidence, and skeptical evaluation of conjectures and conclusions--to obtain reliable knowledge. Humanists affirm that humans have the freedom and obligation to give meaning, value, and purpose to their lives by their own independent thought, free inquiry, and responsible, creative activity. Humanists stand for the building of a more humane, just, compassionate, and democratic society using a realistic ethics based on human reason, experience, and reliable knowledge--an ethics that judges the consequences of human actions by the well-being of all life on Earth.]

Humanism is therefore concerned largely with two issues: first, a rejection of all forms of theism, supernaturalism, and their associated miracles, superstitions, dogmas, authoritarian beliefs, and wishful and hopeful thinking, and second, the resulting necessity of creating or finding values, meanings, and ethical beliefs in a completely naturalistic universe by the sole use of human reason and individual inquiry. In today's society, these are both tough rows to hoe, but let's discuss them both and then turn to Humanism's relation to Unitarian-Universalism.

Humanism is a moral philosophy. Humanists believe that humans can live moral, happy, and productive lives on the basis of human reason and experience, without relying on the supernatural. In this article I want to explore three areas of humanist thought to explain humanism to those unfamiliar with this philosophy of life. After reading this, you can judge humanism for yourself. The humanist worldview is not difficult to understand, but in recent years the religious right has defamed humanism in the popular media, making it their whipping boy on every issue for which they have an opinion. In their quest to make all secular and public institutions conform to their God-centered beliefs, humanism has been frequently disparaged. Let me say at the outset that humanism is indeed opposed to the popular religions based on Biblical concepts of supernaturalism, mysticism, authoritarianism, coercion of belief, and inequality among different human sexes, classes, and nationalities. If you, on the basis of this knowledge, feel that your religious faith might be jeopardized, read no further.

Humanists base their lives and beliefs on three intellectual areas: naturalistic ethics, rational skepticism, and science. Humanists believe in naturalistic ethics, that humans are the ultimate source of morals, values, purposes, and meanings. Moral values find their source in human experience; ethics stem from human need and interest; the purpose and meaning of life are what we make it to be. Human ethics and values are an outgrowth of the cooperation necessary for the survival of a social species such as Homo sapiens. Thus, ethics and values can and should be chosen by the application of human reason; they are not handed down to us by a deity from atop a mountain. The dogmatic claim that only supernatural forces can civilize humanity and that human thought cannot be the source of morality is a superstition. To the contrary, we are responsible for our ethics as much as for our actions. It is improper to equate values and morals with religion. Estimable values and a personal code of ethics can exist independently of any religious doctrine or creed, and have done so for centuries. Many great historical figures lived moral, happy, and productive lives without religion, and their example is being emulated by innumerable men and women today. Humanists recognize this, and state only that since we must choose our values and morals, we base our choices on human reason and experience, not on supernatural authoritarian doctrines. Infinite punishments and rewards for finite acts do not need to be invoked to secure proper moral behavior; ethics can be justified by their ability to promote a happy conscience, a productive and successful life, and the harmonious working of society. Discussion of reasoned moral and value choice occupy the major part of the humanist literature, hardly the activity of a group that is trying to "brainwash youth into accepting non-moral values."

The second realm of humanist thought is rational skepticism, which is withholding belief where there is no evidence or where there is contrary evidence. Humanists do not believe whatever feels good, but only what we are allowed to believe by the available evidence. This realist viewpoint may not be as congenial as wishful thinking, but it is certainly more productive of reliable knowledge. To idealize the universe is a confession of an inability to master the proper ways to understand things that specifically concern us. Opposite to rational skepticism is faith, which is firm belief in something for which there is no evidence or, even worse, where there is contrary evidence. When there is evidence, no one speaks of faith. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. It is popularly thought virtuous to have faith, that is to say, have a conviction which cannot be shaken by contrary evidence. However, this is not a virtue--it is a vice. Faith weakens the intellect by destroying the value of reasoned and empirical thinking. Faith promotes dogmatism, since there is no method by which one can use faith to decide among different points of view or even between truth and falsehood. Faith frequently results in censorship, because if contrary evidence might induce doubt, faith holds that it must be suppressed--it obviously can't be fought by using reason, since faith does not use reason. Faith does not result in reliable knowledge, since knowledge is justified true belief, and faith can only justify its beliefs by either revelation or authority, both intellectually unacceptable in our modern world. I discuss all this in detail because belief in God and the supernatural can only be argued by an appeal to faith, there being no evidence or logical reasons to believe in these things. That is why humanists are not theists or supernaturalists.

Is there any way to justify belief and thus have reliable knowledge? There is only one way known to us: the scientific method. We can justify belief by performing empirical studies, using logical reasoning, and conforming to the principles of statistical inference. This method can be used in all spheres of human activity, such as the search for morals and values, not just in gaining knowledge about the material universe. The problem with this method is that it is hard to do, since it requires training and the use of logical thinking, and it is unpopular for many psychological reasons, so few people practice it. But humanists use it in everyday life. The scientific method requires free inquiry to work properly; therefore, humanists oppose censorship of any kind. Humanists are philosophical naturalists--they believe that what is studied by science is all that there is. We have no reliable knowledge about the supernatural and cannot rely on it. Humanists therefore accept what science says is true about our world. This includes evolution. We resist the effort to teach the religious doctrine of creationism in the public schools. Creationism has no scientific support, and the numerous illegal attempts to mandate its teaching are an example of how organized right-wing religious groups try to use the power of government to force their beliefs on others. Science, including evolution, doesn't have to resort to government coercion to be accepted.

In science, everything must have a cause. Did the universe have a cause, an uncaused God? Perhaps, but if something must be uncaused, it might as well be the universe as God, and we have the benefit of knowing for sure that the universe exists. Thus, humanists do not seek God and do not claim to have any knowledge about God. One universe, here and now, is enough for us. This gives humanists strong reason for working to ensure that the present world is the best possible world. Thus we actively work against discrimination, war, nuclear militarism, and threats to the environment. The only immortality we hope for is to be remembered well for our deeds.]

excerpt taken from http://www.freeinquiry.com/humanism-uu.html

Existentialism

Existentialism – A Definition
Existentialism in the broader sense is a 20th century philosophy that is centered upon the analysis of existence and of the way humans find themselves existing in the world. The notion is that humans exist first and then each individual spends a lifetime changing their essence or nature. 

In simpler terms, existentialism is a philosophy concerned with finding self and the meaning of life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility. The belief is that people are searching to find out who and what they are throughout life as they make choices based on their experiences, beliefs, and outlook. And personal choices become unique without the necessity of an objective form of truth. An existentialist believes that a person should be forced to choose and be responsible without the help of laws, ethnic rules, or traditions.

Existentialism – What It Is and Isn’t
Existentialism takes into consideration the underlying concepts:

• Human free will
• Human nature is chosen through life choices
• A person is best when struggling against their individual nature, fighting for life
• Decisions are not without stress and consequences
• There are things that are not rational
• Personal responsibility and discipline is crucial
• Society is unnatural and its traditional religious and secular rules are arbitrary
• Worldly desire is futile

Existentialism is broadly defined in a variety of concepts and there can be no one answer as to what it is, yet it does not support any of the following:

• wealth, pleasure, or honor make the good life
• social values and structure control the individual
• accept what is and that is enough in life
• science can and will make everything better
• people are basically good but ruined by society or external forces
• “I want my way, now!” or “It is not my fault!” mentality

There is a wide variety of philosophical, religious, and political ideologies that make up existentialism so there is no universal agreement in an arbitrary set of ideals and beliefs. Politics vary, but each seeks the most individual freedom for people within a society.

Existentialism – Impact on Society
Existentialistic ideas came out of a time in society when there was a deep sense of despair following the Great Depression and World War II. There was a spirit of optimism in society that was destroyed by World War I and its mid-century calamities. This despair has been articulated by existentialist philosophers well into the 1970s and continues on to this day as a popular way of thinking and reasoning (with the freedom to choose one’s preferred moral belief system and lifestyle). 

An existentialist could either be a religious moralist, agnostic relativist, or an amoral atheist. Kierkegaard, a religious philosopher, Nietzsche, an anti-Christian, Sartre, an atheist, and Camus an atheist, are credited for their works and writings about existentialism. Sartre is noted for binging the most international attention to existentialism in the 20th century. 

Each basically agrees that human life is in no way complete and fully satisfying because of suffering and losses that occur when considering the lack of perfection, power, and control one has over their life. Even though they do agree that life is not optimally satisfying, it nonetheless has meaning. Existentialism is the search and journey for true self and true personal meaning in life. 

Most importantly, it is the arbitrary act that existentialism finds most objectionable-that is, when someone or society tries to impose or demand that their beliefs, values, or rules be faithfully accepted and obeyed. Existentialists believe this destroys individualism and makes a person become whatever the people in power desire thus they are dehumanized and reduced to being an object. Existentialism then stresses that a persons judgment is the determining factor for what is to be believed rather than by arbitrary religious or secular world values.

exceprt taken from http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/existentialism.htm

Fear, the foundation of religion and what we must do

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing -- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.

excerpt taken from http://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html

How is time related to the Mind?

Physical time is public time, the time that clocks are designed to measure. Psychological time or phenomenological time is private time. It is perhaps best understood as awareness of physical time. Psychological time passes swiftly for us while we are enjoying reading a book, but it slows dramatically if we are waiting anxiously for the water to boil on the stove. The slowness is probably due to focusing our attention on shorter intervals of physical time. Meanwhile, the clock by the stove is measuring physical time and is not affected by anybody's awareness. When a physicist defines speed to be the rate of change of position with respect to time, the term "time" refers to physical time. Physical time is more basic for helping us understand our shared experiences in the world, and so it is more useful than psychological time for doing science. But psychological time is vitally important for understanding many human thought processes. We have an awareness of the passage of time even during our sleep, and we awake knowing we have slept for one night, not for one month. But if we have been under a general anesthetic or have been knocked unconscious and then wake up, we may have no sense of how long we have been unconscious. Psychological time stopped. Some philosophers claim that psychological time is completely transcended in the mental state called "nirvana."

Within the field of cognitive science, one wants to know what are the neural mechanisms that account not only for our experience of time's flow, but also for our ability to place events into the proper time order. See (Damasio, 2006) for further discussion of the progress in this area of cognitive science. The most surprising scientific discovery about psychological time is Benjamin Libet's experiments in the 1970s that show, or so it is claimed, that the brain events involved in initiating free choices occur about a third of a second before we are aware of our choice. Before Libet's work, it was universally agreed that a person is aware of deciding to act freely, then later the body initiates the action.

Psychologists are interested in whether we can speed up our minds relative to physical time. If so, we might become mentally more productive, get more high quality decision making done per fixed amount of physical time, learn more per minute. Several avenues have been explored: using drugs such as cocaine and amphetamines, undergoing extreme experiences such as jumping backwards off a tall tower with bungee cords attached to the legs, and trying different forms of meditation. So far, none of these avenues have led to success productivity-wise.

Any organism's sense of time is subjective, but is the time that is sensed also subjective, a mind-dependent phenomenon? Without minds in the world, nothing in the world would be surprising or beautiful or interesting. Can we add that nothing would be in time? If judgments of time were subjective in the way judgments of being interesting vs. not-interesting are subjective, then it would be miraculous that everyone can so easily agree on the ordering of public events in time. For example, first, Einstein was born, then he went to school, then he died. Everybody agrees that it happened in this order: birth, school, death. No other order. The agreement on time order for so many events is part of the reason that most philosophers and scientists believe physical time is an objective phenomenon not dependent on being consciously experienced. The other part of the reason time is believed to be objective is that our universe has a large number of different processes that bear consistent time relations, or frequency of occurrence relations, to each other. For example, the frequency of a fixed-length pendulum is a constant multiple of the half life of a specific radioactive uranium isotope; the relationship does not change as time goes by (at least not much and not for a long time). The existence of these sorts of relationships makes our system of physical laws much simpler than it otherwise would be, and it makes us more confident that there is something objective we are referring to with the time-variable in those laws. The stability of these relationships over a long time also make it easy to create clocks. Time can be measured easily because we have access to long term simple harmonic oscillators that have a regular period or “regular ticking.” This regular motion shows up in completely different stable systems when they are disturbed: a ball swinging from a string (a pendulum), a ball bouncing up and down from a coiled spring, a planet orbiting the sun, organ pipes, electric circuits, and atoms in a crystal lattice. Many of these systems make good clocks.

Aristotle raised this issue of the mind-dependence of time when he said, "Whether, if soul (mind) did not exist, time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted..." [Physics, chapter 14]. He does not answer his own question because, he says rather profoundly, it depends on whether time is the conscious numbering of movement or instead is just the capability of movements being numbered were consciousness to exist.

St Augustine, adopting a subjective view of time, said time is nothing in reality but exists only in the mind's apprehension of that reality. In the 11th century, the Persian philosopher Avicenna doubted the existence of physical time, arguing that time exists only in the mind due to memory and expectation. The 13th century philosophers Henry of Ghent and Giles of Rome said time exists in reality as a mind-independent continuum, but is distinguished into earlier and later parts only by the mind. In the 13th century, Duns Scotus clearly recognized both physical and psychological time.

At the end of the 18th century, Kant suggested a subtle relationship between time and mind--that our mind actually structures our perceptions so that we can know a priori that time is like a mathematical line. Time is, on this theory, a form of conscious experience.

In the 20th century, the philosopher of science Bas van Fraassen described physical time by saying, "There would be no time were there no beings capable of reason" just as "there would be no food were there no organisms, and no teacups if there were no tea drinkers," and no cultural objects without a culture.

The controversy in metaphysics between idealism and realism is that, for the idealist, nothing exists independently of the mind. If this controversy is settled in favor of idealism, then time, too, would have that subjective feature--physical time as well as psychological time.

It has been suggested by some philosophers that Einstein's theory of relativity, when confirmed, showed us that time depends on the observer, and thus that time is subjective, or dependent on the mind. This error is probably caused by Einstein's use of the term "observer." Einstein's theory does imply that the duration of an event is not absolute but depends on the observer's frame of reference or coordinate system. But what Einstein means by "observer's frame of reference" is merely a perspective or framework from which measurements could be made. The "observer" does not have to be a conscious being or have a mind. So, Einstein is not making a point about mind-dependence.

excerpt taken from http://www.iep.utm.edu/t/time.htm#H2

Objective vs Subjective reality

If everything is an illusion, then does it make any difference? We can’t do anything about it. So it makes no practical difference. Would it rob you of your motivation to do anything? It might not make a difference to some people, but then it might to others. The question of the ultimate nature of reality can make some difference to some people. Some philosophers are pragmatists in the ordinary sense. Some are positivists. A positivist says that if we can perform no experiment that would show a difference, then there is no real difference. They say it is just a matter of semantics. If we are just figures in other people’s dreams, then it follows that we have no control of our lives, and that could make a difference to people. Russell addresses the question about our beliefs about ordinary things. The issue is the reality of color. Are colors part of reality or merely subjective appearances? Russell says that color disappears in the dark.But we might disagree, and say that the color remains, even if we can’t see it. So we say color is part of reality, even though the appearance changes.Russell is saying color is subjective, not objective. One of his arguments is that things look different colors in different lights, and none is the real color. Russell wants to argue that all senses are subjective. Smell, touch, taste, color, sound. Ordinarily, we tend to say that some appearances are fairly objective: we can be wrong about them. There are real distinctions we make about appearance that make a difference to practical life. On the other hand, it’s not clear that science can provide an objective account of what colors things really are. Shapes: in a two dimensional field, tables do not look rectangular. But in a three dimensional field, normal tables do look rectangular. Could shape itself be subjective?Are there any objective properties of physical objects?

• Atomic composition
• Their reality
• Mass
• Number of atoms/molecules
• Size and relationship of sides – shape

Something is subjective if it varies from person to person and there is no way to determine which person is right. Something is objective if there is a definite right answer about it that does not vary from person to person.