Why Do We Have Space Diets, But Not Time Diets?

Nearly everybody, it seems, wants to take up less space in the universe (that is, be skinny), but almost nobody wants to take up less time in the universe (that is, die soon). But both space and time are just dimensions, right? It doesn’t bother you that you don’t take up the whole of space, so why does it bother you that you don’t take up the whole of time, and not extend in the dimension of time to eternity? Harold Bloom once said that the imagination is outraged by its limitations in a body, and he might have added: limitations in a body in time.

So maybe, while wishing to be skinny, Bloom might nevertheless be right that we actually do wish that we extended in space more too, with many skinny bodies and heads to imaginatively fly among the stars in. 

Ben Bradley and Roy Sorensen toss back and forth a bit the question of whether time’s dimensionality should give us solace concerning death here.

And here’s a scene from Amadeus where Mozart actually expresses a desire, not for time, but for taking up more space in the universe (having three heads):

More space in a skinny time—or more time in a skinny space? How about that second serving of cake? More space and time, please! We all seem to want our cake (space) and to eat it too (time).