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Description
This has to be the definitive version of that one.

In the second century AD a guy named Valentinus, a Gnostic, created his own version of what is known as 'emanation theory'. In this view, all of reality, both material and (hypothetically) spiritual 'emanated' from a single perfect unity. Other Gnostics had already created such models before Valentinus, and would continue to do so after him. The general idea was stolen from Plato and Pythagoras, though presented in a seriously corrupted form, and is in general of little interest other than perhaps for artistic or entertainment purposes. Otherwise it is 'a load of gibberish'. What made Valentinus' ponderings upon the nature of existence interesting is that, somewhere in between spiritual and material reality, and apparently completely out of the blue, he placed Time as the 'thing' which gives the Universe its 'rigidity', i.e. structure. Which is quite brilliant. Because if you ran into a brick wall unprotected, and you could reverse time, it wouldn't hurt, or only for a brief moment, and after you turned back in time, you would immediately forget it ever did. Because it never happened! Time is what makes things hard and soft and cold and hot etc. More in general: time is what makes things exist in an absolute form, i.e. makes them exist to begin with. This absoluteness is a function of the irreversibility of time. Without time, reality would be just some undefined blob of pulpy mass. Having time in full operation in the Universe therefore has both its advantages and drawbacks. It makes things exist and experienceable to us, but it also makes running into a brick wall generally a hurtful endeavor. At a more advanced level, it is time's ireversibility that really matters, because when you think about it, time is ultimately nothing more than its own irreversibility. Because if time were reversible, there would be no time. If you could travel back and forth through time, you would be living in a timeless, but also rather pulpy world, in which nothing would be defined and therefore really exist, and things would become quite boring after and indetermined while.

Description
This has to be the definitive version of that one.

In the second century AD a guy named Valentinus, a Gnostic, created his own version of what is known as 'emanation theory'. In this view, all of reality, both material and (hypothetically) spiritual 'emanated' from a single perfect unity. Other Gnostics had already created such models before Valentinus, and would continue to do so after him. The general idea was stolen from Plato and Pythagoras, though presented in a seriously corrupted form, and is in general of little interest other than perhaps for artistic or entertainment purposes. Otherwise it is 'a load of gibberish'. What made Valentinus' ponderings upon the nature of existence interesting is that, somewhere in between spiritual and material reality, and apparently completely out of the blue, he placed Time as the 'thing' which gives the Universe its 'rigidity', i.e. structure. Which is quite brilliant. Because if you ran into a brick wall unprotected, and you could reverse time, it wouldn't hurt, or only for a brief moment, and after you turned back in time, you would immediately forget it ever did. Because it never happened! Time is what makes things hard and soft and cold and hot etc. More in general: time is what makes things exist in an absolute form, i.e. makes them exist to begin with. This absoluteness is a function of the irreversibility of time. Without time, reality would be just some undefined blob of pulpy mass. Having time in full operation in the Universe therefore has both its advantages and drawbacks. It makes things exist and experienceable to us, but it also makes running into a brick wall generally a hurtful endeavor. At a more advanced level, it is time's ireversibility that really matters, because when you think about it, time is ultimately nothing more than its own irreversibility. Because if time were reversible, there would be no time. If you could travel back and forth through time, you would be living in a timeless, but also rather pulpy world, in which nothing would be defined and therefore really exist, and things would become quite boring after and indetermined while.